


Polarity

by Noëlle McHenry (Quasi_Detective)



Series: Don't Be Bashful [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Advice, Anal Sex, Arguing, Art, Artists, Australian Slang, Begging, Birthday, Birthday Cake, Boston, Boys Kissing, Cell Phones, Condoms, Confessions, Conversations, Corpses, Crushes, Dare, Dark, Denial of Feelings, Digital Art, Dubious Consent, Embedded Images, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, Financial Issues, First Meetings, First Time, Foreplay, Foreshadowing, Friendship, Frottage, Gay Sex, Getting to Know Each Other, Guilt, Illustrated, Illustrations, Introvert, Kissing, Licking, Light Angst, Literary References & Allusions, Loss of Virginity, Loud Sex, M/M, Making Out, Male-Female Friendship, Masturbation, Murder, Nightmares, Novella, Omegle, Online Relationship, Past Relationship(s), Plans, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Promises, Regret, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rough Sex, Sex, Sexual Confusion, Sexual Tension, Slow Build, Stalking, Strangers, Strangers to Lovers, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Suspense, Tension, Texting, Wealth, recluse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2018-10-22 06:30:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10691658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasi_Detective/pseuds/No%C3%ABlle%20McHenry
Summary: Australian artist Max Aleshire doesn't belong in Boston. The weather's too cold for him, as are the people. With only one friend, ex-girlfriend Stacey, he's become an introverted, socially paranoid recluse. He's convinced the loneliness and mundane routine are there to stay until Stacey dares him to make a friend online. By chance, he meets a handsome stranger: a writer named Cameron, with whom he has a lot in common. Inspired by this former introvert, Max attempts to open up and improve his life. First off, he lets Cameron in, certain that he's a good guy. After only a few days, he's surprised to discover that he might be developing feelings for this stranger—for another man!Little does Max realize, though, that there's a much darker side to Cameron. If love is blind, then Max might not see the danger he's in until it's too late. If he does, will he care?A fictional suspense novella by Noëlle McHenry about a lonely young man who finds himself trapped in a dangerous love game.***Rewriting in progress!***





	1. Stranger

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Knock](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10570485) by [Noëlle McHenry (Quasi_Detective)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasi_Detective/pseuds/No%C3%ABlle%20McHenry). 
  * Inspired by [Ignore the Camera](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9520076) by [Noëlle McHenry (Quasi_Detective)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasi_Detective/pseuds/No%C3%ABlle%20McHenry). 



> **Update (June 6th, 2018):** So this story has just reached 1000 hits. I'm speechless. Thanks to everyone who's read and enjoyed this story! Rewrite coming soon, so keep your eyes peeled for that! **_Thank you!_**
> 
> Cover: <http://fav.me/db6v1wm>
> 
>  
> 
> _“The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.” – Friedrich Nietzsche_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Edit 2 (June 18th, 2018): Major updates and minor rewrites for Third Edition.**  
>  Edit 1 (January 5th, 2018): General touch-ups. Established where the story is set, added some backstory references, and made it more apparent that Max is Australian.  
> Posted April 21st, 2017

Max laid in bed. He stared at the bedroom wall—at the darkness in front of him—with wide gray eyes. In his left hand, he clutched a pair of scissors. Exhaustion held firm to him, but so did terror. He couldn’t sleep. That would be the death of him. So his eyes fought to stay open, but that grew harder and harder to do with each passing minute.  
           For a second, he wondered how this happened. How did he get into this scenario? In his sleeplessness, he couldn’t remember. All he could think as an answer were the words “bad luck”.  
           The bedroom door inched open with a soft creak. Even if the sound didn’t give it away, the growing sliver of light across the wall Max gazed at would’ve.  
           Though Max froze, his heart went into overdrive. He might’ve got up and run if he didn’t know that was his worst option. Instead, he stayed as still as he could. The trembling of his hands wasn’t so easy to stop, but his biggest struggle was keeping his breathing slow and steady.  
           Nothing happened for what felt like an eternity. Then, the floor creaked a little as the stranger stepped closer to the bed.  
           Max prayed they wouldn’t notice how rigid he was, or that he held a weapon. But he knew his breathing was much too forceful for someone asleep.  
           When the stranger lifted the sheets and got into bed beside him, he wasn’t sure what to do. He was about to die, but he didn’t know what to do. The anxiety and fear he felt threw his restless mind into chaos, but still he laid there, unmoving—paralyzed.  
           A hand slithered closer to Max, then rested itself upon his bony hip. He gripped his scissors even tighter. It was now or never.

* * *

It was raining outside. As of late, the weather seemed confused; some days it would snow, others it would pour. Whatever the case, Maxime Aleshire hadn’t seen the sun in days. Born and raised in Australia, the lack of sunlight made him feel ever more alienated in the States. Though, to be fair, he knew it was due more to his own reclusiveness than the weather in Boston.  
           Day after day, the Aussie remained in his cramped apartment, alone. All he concerned himself with were work and music. In simple terms, he considered himself a workaholic. Whenever he grew sick of work, he’d unwind with more music. On rare occasions he’d leave his apartment, but often he reserved this for when he needed groceries. To his thinking, the less he went outside and interacted with people, the better. He could be safer that way.  
           “M—x? Can—hear—m—?”  
           As Max sat in his swiveling black office chair fiddling with the white cuff of his pale blue hoodie’s sleeve, he found himself thinking, as usual, about work. The joy of being a digital artist, for him, stemmed from how he could make money while working from the comfort of his own home. Given, the money he made was sparse; commissions were few and far between.  
           _It’s because I don’t advertise myself_ , he realized again, as he always did. _I don’t put myself out there. Reckon that’s a bad marketing scheme._ A bad scheme, but one he could never seem to escape. He knew why he never advertised himself: he lacked confidence that he was as good an artist as his handful of fans told him. Thinking about his last art piece, that was only more clear to him.  
           Though most of his commissions were for other’s characters, he enjoyed drawing his own more. Rarely did they appear in more than one piece each. His latest—and somehow most popular thus far—was a woman named Stacey. He named and based her off of his ex, Stacey Eichel, with whom he was still friends . . . sort of. While it seemed to him that she considered him a friend, he often considered how little she meant to him. He didn’t dislike her, only held fast to an old grudge. After all, she decided to break up with him out of the blue that past New Year’s Eve. Without warning, during the countdown. Then, she had the nerve to ask if they could still be friends. He had the nerve to say yes.  
           “Stup—micro—n—. Hel—o?”  
           Max let out a weary sigh. Boredom washed over him, so he gazed in silence at the thick gray curtain over his bedroom window.  
           _My life is too monotonous_ , he thought. _Too predictable._ He considered how long had passed since the last time he went outside and realized it was at least a week. _Even longer since I last showered . . ._  
           The only light in the room came from his glowing laptop screen, which he returned his gaze to. Open on it was his current sub-project: a short indie horror game. Even before starting the project, he’d known he wanted the character based off of Stacey to be the star. But only now did he consider why. Was he trying to “punish” her in some way, by utilizing the warped god-complex he seemed to have developed?  
           _Probably._  
           “Max?”  
           The sound of Stacey herself buzzing in his ear snapped Max from his thoughts. Only then did he remember how he was in a voice chat with her, since she’d pestered him into it.  
           “Stace,” he replied with no enthusiasm, resisting the urge to drop the call. Instead, to give his hand something else to do, he tried to tuck a loose strand of his fluffy brown hair into the band of his headphones. It only fell back down a few seconds later, though.  
           With relief clear in her voice, Stacey exclaimed, “Oh, good. You can still hear me.” Then, she went on to explain, “Mittens stepped on my microphone jack. You know how finicky it is.”  
           As the Aussie digested this information, he overheard the young woman scolding her cat. In that moment, he found himself wishing they were talking over the phone. That way, he could hang up on her and blame it on low battery. Unfortunately, Stacey’s phone had no minutes, so she’d insisted on doing a voice chat over Facebook.  
           Out of the blue, Max heard Stacey ask, “Anyway, what’ve you been up to?”  
           It took a few seconds for him to process the question. “Well, y’know,” he began in his typical lazy, Australian-accented drawl. “The usual.”  
           “Drawing in the dark?” The knowing sarcasm in her voice was so palpable that Max could almost feel it, as if she’d served it as a tennis ball to him.  
           Eager to prevent her from scoring on his court, he coolly countered, “That sounds about right.”  
           A huff. Then, “Max, come on. Life is passing you by. You should do more with it.”  
           “Like what?” As he replied, Max leaned closer to his laptop. With the touchpad, he moved the cursor over the event of Stacey’s character in his game. He clicked it, then dragged her into a pit.  
           “I don’t know, like . . . going outside? Interacting with people in real life? Or, no, you know what? I’d even accept you making a new friend _online_.”  
           The Aussie rolled his eyes. “Overrated,” he stated bluntly. “I’m perfectly healthy right now. I’d like to keep it that way.”  
           Stacey scoffed. “‘Perfectly healthy’? How many times have you talked to yourself in the past twenty-four hours? I mean, like, really had a conversation with yourself, out loud?” Before Max could give his answer (seventeen), she concluded, “If the answer is anything higher than zero, then I’d argue that you’re far from ‘healthy’, bud.”  
           “Yeah, well, just because I’m my own best friend doesn’t mean I’m mentally unhinged, Stace.”  
           “You spent all day ranting to me about how much you hate yourself.”  
           Max took a moment to consider that. “Touché.”  
           Through his headphones came the faintest sound of Stacey chuckling, which mocked him. “How about this? I dare you to hop onto Omegle right now.”  
           “I’m a little busy.” As he hissed this, he selected a new tile and changed the pit under Stacey’s character to lava.  
           “And _stay_ on it, until you make a friend.”  
           To this, Max couldn’t help but guffaw. “I’d sooner have gray hairs!”  
           “With the way you live,” she quipped back, “I don’t doubt it.”  
           They shared a laugh, but for Max it felt bittersweet. It brought to mind old memories, of when the two of them were dating. When she’d served as a social outlet for him—forced him to leave his apartment. Now, without her, he realized he’d turned into a complete recluse.  
           _Why did she break up with me?_ was what found its way into his mind. It was a familiar question, one he often dwelled on but never found an answer for. _Was it because I wasn’t expressive enough?_ The truth was, in Max’s eyes, Stacey was the perfect enigma.  
           There was a temptation to ask her now, but Max froze up before he could. He knew asking stupid questions like that could ruin their friendship—the only one he still had. As far as he cared, the anguish of uncertainty was better than complete solitude.  
           Stacey yawned. “Man, I’m beat,” she exclaimed through the end, words near-incomprehensible.  
           “Get some rest, Stace,” the Aussie encouraged. He picked up Stacey’s character, moving her out of the lava and back onto solid ground.  
           “You too, hmm? Don’t stay up too late.”  
           “Sure.” Though Max said this, he already knew he wouldn’t heed it.  
           “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”  
           “Mm.”  
           “Bye!”  
           “Bye.”  
           The sound of the call ending brought Max both enjoyment and despair. Enjoyment, because now he could work without interruption. Despair, because he didn’t feel like working anymore tonight.  
           Max lounged deeper in his chair and let out a deep sigh. He’d never felt like he belonged in Boston, but breaking up with Stacey had only made that clearer. If he could, he knew he’d go back to Brisbane. Unfortunately, he sometimes struggled to even pay rent for his crappy apartment, so returning was a pipe dream. To make matters worse, his parents were here.  
           _Why did we ever leave Queensland? Why, of all places, did we have to move to_ Boston _? It’s too cold here for me, even after nine years. Even the people are cold. How do my parents stand it?_  
           Gazing up at the dark white ceiling above him, Max pondered the question.  
           _They must be more social than I am_ , he concluded. _Or at least mum must be; dad drinks too much to make friends._  
           Max closed his eyes. He must’ve dozed off, because next thing he knew, it was midnight.  
           With a low groan, the Aussie forced himself upright, pulling his legs in to sit cross-legged. While he was rubbing his eyes, he debated with himself about whether to go to bed or stay up for a little while. All of a sudden, like a freight train with no brakes, Stacey’s dare slammed into the forefront of his mind.  
           For nine of his nineteen years alive, Max had been far from social. Yet, somehow, fatigue always seemed to make him feel a bit open—like a carefree ten-year-old all over again.  
           _Nothing better to do, I reckon . . . So why not take Stacey up on her challenge?_  
           As he typed Omegle’s URL into his browser’s address bar, some part of him argued he was doing this out of spite. That some part of him was only accepting the dare to prove the site’s uselessness to Stacey.  
           _I’ll take some screenshots and send them to her while she’s asleep. Or is that too passive-aggressive?_  
           To no surprise, he immediately regretted going on Omegle. The majority of strangers were either bots or horny people starting every conversation with “ASL?” He couldn’t help but assume it had something to do with how late it was.  
           Thirty minutes must’ve passed before his patience finally reached its limit. But right as he was about to close the browser, he noticed one last stranger.  
           “Hello?” they wrote.  
           Max sighed. Did he have time to spare for one more conversation? Would it be worth it?  
           _Probably not, but I may as well try._  
           “Hi,” he replied, though with reluctance.  
           “Are you a bot?”  
           This question made Max raise a brow. “Ha, not since I last checked.”  
           “Oh, good.” After a pause, they then wrote, “So . . . ASL?” The question concluded with a winking emote.  
           For a long beat, the Aussie only stared at his screen, enraptured by a dull sense of awe.  
           _Well, shit,_ he thought. _So much for that._  
           Yet, despite the way his hand moved for the Esc key, he couldn’t bring himself to leave the conversation himself. Part of him decided it would be better to express his disapproval with silence and watch the stranger leave out of shame.  
           _Who am I kidding? No one on this website has any shame._  
           So it didn’t surprise him too much when the stranger resumed typing instead. What did, though, was _what_ they typed.  
           “Just kidding. Sorry, I thought that might be a funny icebreaker. I’m not the best at talking to strangers.”  
           As refreshing as the admission was, to Max it somehow came across as strange. Even so, he responded with, “Neither am I, to be honest.” Then, in a sudden burst of positivity, he added, “I’m on here in the hopes of making a friend, but I haven’t found anyone who isn’t looking to root me.”  
           “Same here,” replied the stranger. “You’re the only person I’ve met in the past two hours who’s actually spoken to me like a human being.  
           Max’s eyes widened. _Far out! Two hours? This bloke must have the patience of a saint!_  
           With a smiling emote tacked on, the stranger exclaimed, “Let’s be friends! I know the point of this site is anonymity, but my name’s Cameron. What’s yours?”  
           The Aussie considered his options before deciding there’d be no harm in giving his name, it being common and all. “Max.”  
           “Nice to meet you, Max. What do you like to do?”  
           “I make artwork. I’m a digital artist for hire.”  
           “Cool! I’m a writer. My favorite genre is horror. In fact, I’m in the middle of writing a novel in that genre.”  
           “That’s funny. I’m actually working on a horror game right now.” It wasn’t until he sent this that Max realized it forced the conversation into an awkward dead-end. He knew he had a bad habit of steering conversations to focus on himself, because “himself” was what he knew best. Even so, he could never stop doing it.  
           Somehow, though, Cameron managed to improvise. “Really?” he asked. “What’s it about?”  
           The questions caught Max off-guard, so he answered, “It’s about a girl named Stacey. I haven’t quite figured out the plot yet.” A blunt answer, but true nonetheless; besides the protagonist and a rough intro, he didn’t have much to work with. Try as he may, writing interesting stories was far from his niche.  
           “You’ll figure it out sooner or later,” Cameron told him. “Don’t rush it. It should come to you naturally.” Another winking emote.  
           Max digested this reply, reading it over again and again. Every time he did, he felt himself smile a little more.  
           Their conversation dragged on and on. With every message they exchanged, the Aussie found himself growing increasingly comfortable. He discovered through the course of their chat that he and Cameron had a lot in common. For example, they were both introverts. Or, rather, Cameron was a _former_ introvert; somehow, he claimed to have overcome it by force. Over time and the course of several interactions outside his comfort zone, he’d managed to convert himself to extroversion.  
           “Isn’t that exhausting? Interacting with strangers, I mean,” Max inquired. “For me, even talking to a friend over the phone is exhausting. And God forbid I have to call someone myself.”  
           “To be honest,” Cameron responded, “I’ve never been happier. It’s better to take risks than to be lonesome.”  
           Max allowed Cameron’s words to sink in. There was a slim chance he’d ever act on the advice, especially considering how worn out he felt. After a quick glance at the clock on his taskbar, he did a double take.  
           _Holy shit, it’s two in the morning already? Have I been talking with Cameron for that long?_  
           He thought for a moment before deciding he needed to sleep before he embarrassed himself. The last thing he wanted was to say something stupid without thinking. “Listen, I’m knackered, mate. I need to get some sleep, but I’d like to talk to you again.”  
           “I would, too,” Cameron replied. “This is the best conversation I’ve had in a while.”  
           “I could add you on Facebook.”  
           “I don’t have a Facebook profile. I’m not too comfortable using that site. Could we connect through text?”  
           To Max, it seemed an odd leap, going from online networking to asking for his cellphone number. Part of him argued e-mail would be a more rational jump.  
           _Then again, who the hell uses e-mail anymore? If I proposed that, he’d think I’m a weirdo or something. Everyone talks through text nowadays . . . If it’s the only way to talk to him again after this, then why not? What’s the worst that could happen?_  
           “Sure, all right.”  
           “Great! Here’s my number. Send me a text before you disconnect from here!” After this, Cameron sent a phone number.  
           Max reached into one of the pockets of his dark green cargo shorts and pulled out his cellphone. With tired eyes, he tapped the number into the contact box and pressed the text bubble.  
           “Hello? It’s Max,” he wrote. But as he moved his thumb to the send button, he froze.  
           _You’re about to make a mistake, Max._  
           Something deep in the back of his mind stopped him in his tracks. But despite his better judgment, he then shook his head at his own thoughts.  
           _No, it’s time I get over this silly social paranoia. Cameron seems nice. Sure, I haven’t known him very long, but he’s a good guy. I can feel it. If I’m gonna open up to anyone, it might as well be him._  
           After he sent the text, he watched as Cameron disconnected from Omegle. A few seconds later, the near-stranger began writing a text back. Max thought he knew what to expect from it, until it appeared in a new bubble.  
           “Got you!” it read.  
           For a long moment, Max only stared at the text, unsure how to feel about it.  
           _Okay,_ he eventually thought, _that’s . . . a bit strange._  
           Yet, even so, he decided not to read too much into it.  
           _It’s only a casual reply. No reason to freak out over it. He must’ve meant it like “Understood” or something, right? That’s gotta be it._  
           Clinging to the slight comfort rationality brought, the Aussie took a deep breath and turned off his laptop. After a minute or two spent getting ready for bed, his phone dinged, so he looked at it.  
           Cameron’s new text read, “Are you going to sleep?”  
           “Yeah,” Max replied, “you?”  
           “Yeah.” There came and went a pause before Cameron’s next message: “Man, look at us. We’ve only just met, but we talked until we fell asleep. This could be the start of something beautiful, Max.”  
           The Aussie smiled, though he wasn’t sure what emotion caused it.  
           _Sure_ , he thought, inner voice dripping with awkward sardonicism. Though, he opted not to reply to Cameron this time.  
           He plugged his phone into the wall and laid it face-up on the floor beside his bed. Then, he slid under the covers. A few minutes passed, during which he tried to sleep, but his mind wouldn’t stop racing. His conversation with Cameron kept running through his head. Sleep felt impossible.  
           _Was it right to trust him so fast? I’m usually more cautious than that . . . Oh, whatever. I’m sure she’ll be apples. Can’t have good things without taking risks, can you? Who knows, maybe Cameron’s right: this_ could _be the start of something beautiful._  
           Max dwelled on the idea, blinking and staring at the ceiling. As it finally started to sink in, he rolled his eyes.  
           _Ha. Too right. Shut up, ya twit._  
           Sick of thinking, Max grabbed the blanket and pulled it up over his head. With any luck, the warm embrace of darkness would lull him to sleep. But despite his efforts, he spent the rest of his time awake thinking of Cameron.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second artwork by **[kai/tohrukunikuda](http://tohrukunikuda.tumblr.com/)**.


	2. Apartment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 1 (January 7th, 2018): General touch-ups. Added some thoughts for Max so there's _some_ dialogue.  
>  Originally posted on April 24th, 2017.

When Max woke up, he couldn’t remember what he’d dreamt about. This wasn’t unusual in general, but it was as of late. For the past two weeks, he’d been having vivid dreams that he recalled well after awakening. Though, he didn’t miss jolting awake to write gibberish into his phone in a pitiful attempt to document what he saw.  
           His phone dinged, but he was too groggy to react. Instead, he curled into the fetal position and buried himself in his blanket. He wanted to fall back to sleep. Unfortunately, the incessant drone of the birds chirping outside had a different idea. Frustrated, he smacked the blanket off of himself with a groan. His room was still dark, as usual. The only indications that it was morning were the birds and the slivers of light that slipped around the curtains. At least he wasn’t tired—no, he felt well-rested. He only wanted to stay asleep because he knew he didn’t have anything else to do.  
           On top of the birds chirping, his phone dinged yet again. Max sighed and closed his eyes.  
            _Reckon it’s Stacey, wanting to yarn about something I don’t care about. Can’t she let a guy sleep in peace?_  
           Hang on. What if it’s that bloke from last night—Cameron, was it?  
           Remembering Cameron brought him sudden interest in his phone. He rolled over onto his side and reached down to the floor. It took a few pats of the cold, hard surface for him to finally find it. When he did, he removed it from its charger and looked at its notification wall.  
           Sure enough, he had an overwhelming amount of texts from Stacey. The latest began with the words “They have job offerings”; Max found himself snarling at them like a wild dog. Somehow, she’d got it into her head that digital art commissions weren’t a “real job”. That, he assumed, was part of the reason why she’d left him. Even so, she’d still send him information about job offers she heard about.  
           Given, in her defense, most of them at least had something to do with art. What she couldn’t seem to grasp was that Max wasn’t traditional artist. He wasn’t even sure where to start when it came to painting on anything other than a digital canvas. So why she made a point of sending him job offers for traditional artists was a mystery to him. As far as he was concerned, he was making enough money with commissions and donations from fans and the like. His mother wired him a certain amount of money every month to help him pay his rent. He was nineteen years old and didn’t need a “real job”. He was doing fine as it was.  
           Underneath Stacey’s messages, Max took delight in finding a few texts from Cameron. The latest of his read “Let me know when you wake up!”  
           Instead of replying immediately, Max decided to perform his morning ritual first. Clutching his phone in his fist, he sat up in bed and dangled his feet over the side. He took a deep breath, then stood up and stretched. After grabbing his zip-up hoodie off of his chair and slipping it on over his black baseball t-shirt, he put his phone into one of its pockets. Finally, he left his bedroom.  
           Max’s apartment was small, but that was how he liked it. Stepping out of the bedroom led him straight into the living room. To the left of his bedroom was the door to the bathroom and, separated from the living room by a thin island, the kitchen. The door out of his apartment was a few inches to the left of the fridge. The floor in his apartment was cheap white tile, but the walls were a pale linen color that he somehow admired.  
           With a yawn, he headed into the bathroom and flicked the light on. In his reflection, he noticed the bags under his eyes. They’d never go away, would they? Once he’d messed up his sleep schedule once, they were there to stay. He picked up his toothbrush and turned on the sink. As he rinsed the bristles, he used his other hand to get the toothpaste from the medicine cabinet. Then, he took a minute or two to scrub his teeth.  
           When he finished in the bathroom, he went to the fridge and opened it to look inside. It was more or less empty. He poked his head into the freezer. It was barren, apart from the bag of frozen peas sitting inside that had been there since Max moved in, but wasn’t his. The young man sighed. It seemed he’d have to go to the store. Wanting to eat for the sake of it, Max opened the cupboard and pulled out a bag of potato chips, salt and vinegar flavor. One at a time, he started to shovel them into his mouth. Then, bringing them along, he paced back into his dark bedroom.  
           For a long moment, he stared at the curtains while he ate. He’d nailed them into the top of the windowsills so he could take them down easier if he so pleased. He never had, though. Yet, without warning, he thought, _it’s too bloody dark in here._ Motivated by this whim, he curled up the bag of chips and set it down on the seat of his rolling office chair. Then he approached the curtains. To take them down he had to stand on his bed, so he did. With no further hesitation, he ripped them away.  
           He regretted it immediately. The light from outside was blinding. He flinched at it and let out a noise of discomfort and betrayal. All that was missing was the hissing of burning flesh upon the light’s touch. So, deterred, he decided to re-cover one of the two windows. The other could stay uncovered, at least until he grew to hate sunlight again. Trying to force his eyes to adjust, Max squinted and peered through the window for the first time in months.  
            _Ah, shit. It snowed again. Guess that explains why it’s so bright . . ._  
           His apartment was on the fourth floor of a cheap building in a rundown part of Boston. As such, the view from his window was nothing to write home about. Pressing the side of his face against the cold glass, he tried to look as far down as he could. He wasn’t able to see the ground, so he knew that it was one hell of a drop.  
            _If I opened the window and slid out, would the fall kill me immediately? Nah, Buckley’s of that; with my luck, I’d only cripple myself or something._  
           He shook his head, trying to clear his mind of the thought. He wasn’t suicidal, only had a morbid imagination. In fact, he wouldn’t even call himself depressed. Though, he likely was, very much so. Life bored him and, as much as he wanted to deny it, desolation was all he knew anymore. He wanted to talk to people, but at the same time, didn’t. His own contradictory wants and needs frustrated him to no end. So, instead of taking a side on the matter, he decided to ignore it altogether. He talked when he felt liked he could without coming across as awkward. Otherwise, he kept his mouth shut.  
           Max stepped down off his bed and pulled his phone back out. He looked at the time. It was 11:43 in the morning.  
            _Might as well go to the store now_ , he thought. _Nothing better to do._  
           He opened his texts, leaving Stacey’s on “read” (as he often did). He replied only to Cameron: “Hey, I’m awake now. About to run to the store.”  
           After only a few seconds, as if he’d been waiting, Cameron responded. “Good morning! Did you sleep well?”  
           “I guess so. You?”  
           “I wound up staying up all night working on my novel. Actually, I finished revising the first chapter and was wondering if you’d like to read it.”  
           Max pouted in thought and shrugged to himself. _Why not?_  
           “I’d love to!” he accepted, using an exclamation point; noteworthy because it was a rare punctuation mark for him. Before sending the text, he debated its presence, replacing it with a full-stop twice. He ended up deciding to keep it, though, sending the text with it as a show of good faith.  
           “Great! I guess I’ll have to email it to you, huh? It’s a PDF file.”  
           Max frowned a bit at the sight of “e-mail” written without a hyphen. He knew that was the norm, but he preferred the hyphenated version. “Yeah. That’s fine, though. I’ve got Adobe Reader.”  
           “Oh,” Cameron asked, “what version? I don’t think it’ll work right on anything higher than version nine . . .”  
           “Pretty sure I’ve got nine, actually.” Max told him as he blindly reached over and pressed the power button on his laptop. The sound of “Adobe Reader 9” rung a bell. Though he’d never looked into which version he had, he could only assume that was it.  
           “Perfect! Can I have your email address, or would you like mine?”  
           Max replied with his e-mail address. He wasn’t as concerned with giving that out as he was his phone number. Cameron already had the latter anyway, so he was thus assured that giving his e-mail would lead to no harm. “Send it to me while I’m at the store and I’ll read it on my laptop when I get back.”  
           “Will do! I hope you enjoy it,” Cameron remarked with a smiley face.  
           Not knowing what else to say, Max smiled somewhat at his phone before turning its screen off. Sure enough, as he was slipping off his shorts, he heard a ding signifying that he’d received an e-mail.  
           Max was a slender young man with long, skinny legs. He stood at five feet eight inches, and the last time he weighed himself, he’d weighed around 119 pounds. Because of his long legs, it was difficult for him to find pants. That didn’t matter though, because he’d been wearing the same clothes for at least three years. He pulled on his gray jeans and moved his phone into the front left pocket, then picked up his wallet from beside his laptop. This, he put into his front right pocket.  
           On the floor next to the bedroom door, he kept his soft-soled sneakers. Though Max had long legs, he also had small feet. This made finding shoes difficult, as well. So, the sneakers were a size or two bigger than he needed. He didn’t mind, though; he’d found a way to tie them so he could slip them on and off with ease, but wouldn’t fall off his feet while he walked.  
           He figured, because of the snow that was still falling, it was cold outside. He kept his jacket—black and puffy with a tan fur-trimmed hood—draped over the arm of the couch. After standing back up, he left his bedroom. Before picking up the coat, he pulled on his sweater’s hood. Then, after putting the coat on, he let it fall back down.  
           His keys were where he usually left them: sitting on top of the kitchen island. He picked them up, then left his apartment. After locking his door, he put the keys into one of his coat pockets and then buried his hands into them. The hallway outside his apartment was quiet. Max looked right, then left. No one. He let out a deep sigh. With that, he headed for the staircase.

 


	3. Quarrel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 1 (January 8th, 2018): General touch-ups.  
> Originally posted on April 25th, 2017.

Max took the stairs down to the first floor and stepped outside. It was cold, as he expected, but something told him that it was only going to get colder this month. He stifled a laugh as he realized it was almost April. _So much for spring_ , he thought.  
           The walk to the convenience store nearby was uneventful. Max spent most of it lost in his own thoughts. He passed a few strangers, all of which caused him to tense up. Since he lived in a poor area, he didn’t trust anybody on the streets. He couldn’t help but worry that one day, someone would stab him without warning as he was walking somewhere. It was a silly fear, but not one that he could suppress. Thus, whenever he passed anyone, he would puff out his chest in a poor attempt to seem intimidating. He doubted that it worked; he was too short and slender. Usually, he walked slouched somewhat, looking down at the ground in front of his feet.  
           He pulled open the door to the convenience store when he got there and stepped inside. A few feet in front of him, behind the counter, stood a café brown-skinned old man. Upon the sight of the visitor—a regular, no less—he opened his lips wide in a pleased smile. Doing so revealed how many of his teeth were missing.  
           This was Franco Diefenbach. While he ran the nearby convenience store, he also happened to live in the apartment right under Max’s. The Aussie was on good terms with the old man—while he seemed a bit creepy, it was a _friendly_ sort of creepy that he could relate to. But at the same time, though he didn’t want to admit it, he had a feeling that he was, in general, better than the guy. He hated the narcissistic part of himself that harbored such thoughts, but it was a part that helped him survive. As long as he was “better” than everybody else, then he could pretend he was a little bit less lonesome.  
           “Max,” Mr. Diefenbach greeted through his grin, “it is good to see you!”  
           “G'day,” Max forced himself to say back. He knew that his face suggested frustration at the old man’s social nicety, though this wasn’t the case in his head.  
           “I have not seen you in a while!” the old man said. Or at least that’s what Max _thought_ he said. It was sometimes hard to understand Mr. Diefenbach’s words, what with the lack of teeth and all. Plus, English wasn’t the man’s first language. He gave him credit for trying, though.  
           The only valid response to come into Max’s head was “You too.” He didn’t say it, though, because he wasn’t sure whether it would come across as an odd thing to say. Then again, he was talking to a man who hardly knew English, so did it matter? Either way, he only hummed in response.  
           From the aisles of the small, modest shop, Max picked up his usual purchases: four boxes of macaroni and cheese, a loaf of bread, a tub of butter, a two-liter of pop, and a bag of potato chips—sour cream and onion flavor this time. When he placed his purchases on the counter, Mr. Diefenbach smiled again.  
           “For you,” he announced, “I give discount!” Then, he pointed at the potato chips. “Chips, free!”  
           To Max, it was a pleasant surprise. Being a regular had its fair share of small perks, it seemed. “Oh. Thanks.”  
           Mr. Diefenbach proceeded to ring up the rest of Max’s purchases. He told the young man his total. “You pay with debit?” he then inquired, knowing Max’s routine to a T.  
           “Yep,” Max answered. Pulling his wallet back out of his pocket was more difficult than he’d anticipated, though. Flustered, he laughed. “Hold on for a second. I’ve got it.”  
           “Stuck, is it?” Mr. Diefenbach chuckled. “No hurry.” To fill the dead air, he asked, “You still dating girlfriend? Her name was . . .”  
           Realizing he was talking about Stacey, Max said, “Oh, no. We broke up back in December.”  
           “Oh. So sorry.”  
           “No worries.” Finally, Max got his wallet free from the confines of his pocket. From a fold inside of it he pulled out his debit card. He stuck it into the card reader chip-first and entered his pin.  
           “Still friends?”  
           Max looked up at the silver-haired man. “Hmm?”  
           “You and her.”  
           The introvert looked back down at the screen, selecting his checking account. “Yeah,” he answered in a mumble, “you could say that.” At that moment, his phone started to ring in his other pocket.  
            _Seems Stacey bought more minutes . . ._  
           “Speak of the devil and she shall appear,” Max joked. Mr. Diefenbach didn’t seem to understand, but he didn’t say anything. Quickly, he bagged his customer’s purchases. Max took this time to pocket his wallet and pull out his phone. Indeed, it was Stacey calling him. Since it would spare him the awkwardness of Mr. Diefenbach’s typical “come again” spiel, he sighed and answered.  
           “I told you, I don’t like being on the phone while I’m outside,” he complained the instant he knew she could hear him.  
           “Well, excuse me for not being psychic,” Stacey quipped back. “I long since gave up trying to figure out any pattern for when you go outside.”  
           Mr. Diefenbach handed Max the bag of bought goods, which he took in his right hand. He waved at the old man, who returned the gesture with his typical toothless grin. Then he turned around and left the convenience store.  
           “Listen,” Stacey began, “did you actually read my texts this time, or did you open and close them like you usually do?”  
           “You actually figured out what I do?” Max asked her as he glanced his peripherals to soothe his nerves. “How long did that take you?”  
           “Hardy har har. I’m worried about you, all right? I mean, I thought you were better than those entitled ‘I don’t need a job’ pricks.” A low grumble: “You sure complain about them a lot.”  
           “I’m not entitled to anything,” Max bit back. “But I _do_ have a job.”  
           “Sitting around your computer all day’s hardly a job, Max.”  
           “Are we really going to keep on with this stupid argument? What about this can’t you get through your thick goddamned skull, Stace?” Max did his best to keep his voice low enough to not attract any unwanted attention to himself.  
           “What I can’t ‘get through my thick goddamned skull’ is how you _don’t want_ a job. It must get boring in your apartment, right?”  
           “Look, you aren’t my mother. Hell, you’re not even my girlfriend anymore. So don’t lecture me on how to live my life.”  
           “God forbid I see you as a little brother.”  
           Max rolled his eyes so hard, he felt they may eject themselves from his skull. “Oh, pull your head in. Stop making excuses for yourself, Stace. You don’t see me like a brother, you’re just”—wanting to call her a “controlling bitch”, but also not wanting to deal with the repercussions, Max truncated it. “—controlling.”  
           Stacey huffed in frustration. “Would you at least listen to me this once? Hear the job offer out like a rational human being?”  
           “No,” Max responded brusquely. “Even if it _is_ good, I’ll continue to be furious out of sheer spite.”  
           “You wouldn’t be the Max I know if you didn’t.” Despite everything, Stacey did know quite a bit about his nature—both the good and bad of it. “I’m going to start now, okay?”  
           Max said nothing. In his mind he replied with enthusiasm, “Okay,” before immediately hanging up on her. In reality, though, while he’d admit he was a prick, he wasn’t _that_ much of a prick. Even so, he enjoyed the thought until Stacey’s voice assaulted his ears once more. She was like some sort of harpy from Hell. He wondered how, sometimes, he almost managed to tolerate her . . . and vice versa.  
           “It’s for a theater nearby,” Stacey explained of the job offer.  
           “Do I need to take a bus to get to it?” questioned Max, for the sake of being difficult.  
           “Probably? Unless you’re keen on walking for forty minutes. If that’s such a big problem, though, I’ll drive you myself.” Unlike Max, Stacey had a car; in fact, she lived in her own house, part of a duplex on the other side of the city.  
           “What’s the job for?”  
           “They need someone new to make posters and playbills for their productions.”  
           Max puzzled over this for a moment. “I need to leave my apartment for this _why?_ ”  
           “I never said you did. If you’d actually read my texts, we could’ve avoided that whole argument. I’m giving in to your stupid preference, okay? This time, anyway.”  
           Now Max felt a little stupid. Yet, while this offer _was_ something he’d actually consider, he found himself hesitating. There were so many other artists out there. He would have a lot of competition if he did offer his services—competition that was better than him.  
           “I don’t know,” he balked. “I’d have to think about it.”  
           “You never cease to amuse me, Max,” Stacey told him. “People already pay for your art, but you stay so humble.”  
           “What do you mean?”  
           “I know you’re concerned about them thinking your art is shit or something.”  
           Rather than admit to this, Max responded, “I don’t know what you mean.” By now, he’d reached his apartment complex. He pulled open the door and rushed to the staircase, eager to reach the safety of his apartment.  
           “I sent a link to their website in my texts. Will you think about it?” Stacey asked him as he exited the stairwell on his floor.  
           “No promises,” Max answered, holding his phone with his shoulder as he reached into his coat pocket for his keys. “But _maybe_. What’s the pay rate?”  
           “You don’t care about the pay rate.”  
           She was right: he didn’t. “ _Is_ there a pay rate?”  
           Stacey laughed at the question like he was stupid, but still didn’t answer. “Look, babe, I’ve gotta go run an errand.”  
           “Don’t call me babe.”  
           An awkward pause. “Did I call you that? Whoops. Force of habit, I guess.”  
           “You were saying something about letting me go?” Max closed and locked the door behind himself, then set the bag down onto the kitchen island.  
           “Well,” teased his ex, “I could take my phone with me.”  
           “I’m hanging up now.”  
           “All right, bye. Don’t kill yourself.”  
           “Again,” Max took his turn to poke fun, “no promises.” The call then over, he took a deep breath.  
            _Stacey’s taken a lot out of me with only that. I’m so worn out now. How does Cameron do it?_  
           After setting his phone down, he unpacked the bag and put everything away, except for the pop, which he poured himself a cup of. He chugged it and filled it up again before finally putting the bottle in the fridge. Then he set the cup down beside his phone. When he removed his coat, he threw it back down onto the couch. His phone went into his sweater pocket.  
           The cup of pop went with him into his bedroom, where he set it down beside his laptop. He slipped off his shoes and returned them to their place beside the bedroom door. When he went to sit down, he hesitated. Luckily, though he hadn’t noticed it, he’d remembered the half-empty bag of salt and vinegar chips he’d set down on the seat. He picked them up, sat down—ate a few chips for the hell of it. Only then did he open his browser—Google Chrome—to finally check the e-mail from Cameron.  
           Besides the attached PDF file, titled simply “ch1.pdf”, the e-mail contained only, “Enjoy! - CF”. Max downloaded the manuscript without further hesitation. Before he opened it, though, he took out his phone and sent Cameron another text.  
           “About to read it,” he informed him. “Anything I should know beforehand?”  
           Quick as ever, Cameron replied, “I don’t want to spoil anything.” This statement, like his previous, concluded with a smiley face.  
           Max sighed again. For some reason, he had a bad feeling about the file.  
            _What if it’s a virus or something?_  
            _Pfft. A virus, in a PDF file?_  
           _You never know . . . It’s possible._  
            _Don’t be daft. Why would he go to so much trouble? It looks normal enough, anyway._  
           So he chose ignore his intuition. Albeit with some reluctance, he decided to open it—to read the first chapter of Cameron’s novel. He clicked on the file in the download bar and waited for the program to load. Then, he started reading.

 


	4. Commission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 1 (January 9th, 2018): General touch-ups.  
> Originally posted on April 26th, 2017.

The first chapter of Cameron’s novel revealed its main character: a pink, man-like rabbit. Its name was Bashful Bunny. Bashful hated liars. Cameron’s novel focused not on the victims, but on the murderous rabbit itself. It was the host of a children’s cartoon, but the show had a twist in that Bashful would escort the kids to his world. If the children lied to him too many times, he’d put them through hell.  
           In all honesty, it was a rather disturbing concept . . . Yet, Max found himself hooked and wanting more. He wasn’t even a fan of anthropomorphism, but the way Cameron wrote was intoxicating. He drank Cameron’s words greedily, as if they were the elixir of life. He’d even go so far as to say his writing was of professional quality.  
           The final page of the file had a header that read “About the Author”. Max wondered for a moment why it was there, but figured it was for him to find out more about his new acquaintance. Preceding the header was a professional-looking, colored photograph of Cameron himself. The man had dark ecru skin and a strong build. He looked tall and athletic. His face, Max had to admit, was gorgeous. With short black hair in a small quiff and warm-but-dark caramel eyes, Cameron was the epitome of what Max pictured when he thought “handsome”.  
           “Wow,” Max breathed as he stared at the headshot in awe. He’d never found another man attractive before, but Cameron was something else. The moment he noticed his infatuation, though, he shook the thought from his head.  
            _Come on, Max, you’re not even gay! Even if Cameron is a spunk . . . it has to be platonic. It has to be. Stupid to even_ think _otherwise._  
           In Cameron’s self-written bio, he referred to himself in third person. It read, “Cameron Fenn is a part-time medical student and part-time independent novelist. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in his hometown of Pittsburgh in 2015. Since starting grade school, he has written four horror novels. His other hobbies include working out and doing volunteer work for charity organizations.”  
           It was then that Max realized: if they’d met under different circumstances, he would’ve despised Cameron. He would’ve hated him, even, if only out of envy toward his seemingly perfect life. Yet somehow, he didn’t feel that way. Was it because he’d figured most people with that lifestyle to be snobs? Cameron had already proven that he was as friendly as they came. Max was growing more and more impressed. If he actually had a chance to be such a model citizen’s friend, then why should he let silly paranoia stop him?  
           “That chapter was a beaut!” Max texted to him. “You plan to continue this, right?”  
           “Yeah,” Cameron answered. “I’m actually almost finished the second chapter.”  
           Max smiled at his phone. “I’d love to read more.”  
           Cameron responded with an open-mouthed smiley, then asked: “So, you told me you’re an artist?”  
           “Yep,” Max answered. He felt nervous all of a sudden.  
           “I looked you up while you were away. Is this your art?” After this, Cameron sent Max a picture. It was Max’s most recent piece: a concept painting of the fictional version of Stacey. The character resembled his ex is almost every way. The only striking difference was that the real Stacey made a point of keeping her black hair done up in a high ponytail. His personal favorite parts of the image were her eyes; they were hazel, like Stacey’s. Unlike his ex-girlfriend, though, the character wore eyeliner and thick mascara.  
           “Yeah, that’s Stacey,” Max answered. “She’s the main character of that game I mentioned before.”  
           “Your art is absolutely stunning,” Cameron told him. Max would’ve dismissed the compliment as a lie, but the lack of emoticons somehow made it seem more sincere.  
           “Thanks,” was the only awkward response that Max could think of. He wanted to kick himself for not having anything better to say.  
           “If I may return to the subject of my novel, though; I have a small problem with it.”  
           “What’s that?”  
           “I’m not too good at drawing, to be honest. I need someone who can make art for the cover. You told me you’re for hire, and I like your style a lot. What do you think?”  
           Max stared at Cameron’s message for a long moment. He read it over twice, thrice, four times. Still, he was too surprised by the offer to even know where to begin.  
            _Is . . . Is this happening right now? Is he complementing me and asking me to draw something for him? Am I dreaming?_  
           “I’d be willing to pay you extra for a commercial license, since I plan to sell the novel when it’s finished,” Cameron added.  
           “Sure,” Max finally replied, “I’d love to.” When he realized it seemed like he was only doing it for the offer of extra money, he said, “You don’t need to pay me, though. I’d be more than happy to do it for free.”  
           “Are you sure? I feel like I should pay you.”  
           “No worries,” Max insisted. “Call it a ‘first-one-free’ sort of deal. Let me know what you’re thinking once you’ve got an idea, and I’ll get right on it.”  
           “All right, thank you! I owe you one, Max.”  
           It wasn’t until Max looked up from his phone that he realized the light for his laptop’s webcam was on. He stared at the glowing green circle in confusion for a good ten seconds.  
            _That light means the webcam’s active, doesn’t it? But I don’t have any programs open that could be using it . . ._  
           He scratched his head and closed Adobe Reader. Still, the light remained unblinking. So he leaned close and reached up to flick the little LED. It stayed lit. Curious now, he opened his task manager and skimmed the running processes. Nothing unusual caught his eye. Defeated but still curious, Max sat back in his chair with a creak and rubbed his chin. As he did, he stared into the camera’s lens.  
           Part of him panicked. He’d drilled it into his mind that the light meant the webcam was on. What else was there to think other than that someone was watching him? Yet, another part of him argued how stupid that idea was.  
            _Who in their right mind would want to waste time watching me? All I ever do is sit here, veg out, or draw. There’s nothing to see, watching me._  
           To ease his mind, he decided to chalk the light up to a hardware error. It might be registering as on, but it wasn’t. His laptop _was_ getting awfully old. He wouldn’t be too surprised if the light remained on forever. So, with that, he decided to go about his usual behavior of ignoring the webcam altogether. It wasn’t as though he ever used it, anyway.  
           His phone dinged, so he looked down at it. Cameron had asked, “Can I see a picture of you?”  
           Figuring he should return the favor, as Cameron had already revealed an image of himself, Max looked through his gallery. It was hard to find pictures of himself, since he had his artworks and plentiful art resources saved. After at least three minutes, he finally found a selfie he looked semi-decent in. It was a few months old, but his appearance had hardly changed since then. He went to send it to Cameron, but accidentally tapped on an old photo of him and Stacey instead.  
           “Shit,” he mumbled to himself. _Serves me right for not deleting it . . ._  
           “Who’s she?” Cameron immediately asked. “She looks like your character.”  
           “I didn’t mean to send this one,” Max confessed. “That’s my ex-girlfriend, Stacey. I based the character off of her.”  
           “Oh,” Cameron questioned, “ex? What happened between you two?”  
           Max paused before answering. It wasn’t any of Cameron’s business . . .  
           “Sorry. I don’t mean to pry. Only curious.”  
           Deciding that he meant no harm, Max decided to answer anyway. “I’m pretty sure she broke up with me because she has a hard time understanding my choice to do digital art for pay. Thinks I should get a ‘real job’. She was controlling but, at the same time, sort of hypocritical.”  
           “How so?”  
           “Well, she kept wanting to plan my life, but whenever I so much as suggested something for her, she’d fly off the handle. Like she had something to prove by not listening to me, you know?”  
           “Stubborn?”  
           “That’s an understatement.”  
           “My mother was the same way,” Cameron related. “Though, to be fair, I guess I had no right to give her suggestions, being her child and all.”  
           Max chuckled, but didn’t type a response.  
           “Listen,” Cameron then said, “we met less than twenty-four hours ago, but I want you to know you can talk to me whenever you need. I love listening to people. Being a former introvert myself, I know that you must need someone to vent to. I won’t judge or ignore you. I’m here whenever you need me, Max.” Again, he ended his text with a smiley face.  
           Not used to experiencing human kindness, Max felt a warm wash of gratitude. He couldn’t stop himself from making a dorky-but-pleased smile. It took him a little bit too long to think of a response that didn’t come off as rude in his head, though. He settled on, “That means a lot to hear. I don’t have anyone to talk to, but somehow, I feel like I can trust you. Thank you.”  
           “No worries,” was Cameron’s response. This mimicry only made Max happier.  
           After a half hour that Max spent listening to music, Cameron texted him a concept for his cover. He requested a simple picture of Bashful. Though Max didn’t have much experience drawing animals, he figured this could be good practice. He started working on the image only moments later.  
           Cameron described Bashful as having squinty eyes, being tall, and wearing a dark blue suit. Besides these details, though, he was open to however Max interpreted the rabbit. The artist took these three details along with what he’d read of the creature in the first chapter and ran with them. He started drawing Bashful in a cartoon-y style, since drawing it in realism didn’t feel right. It was technically a cartoon character, anyway.  
           He had finished the clean version of the line art when he noticed he had an unread e-mail. It was from his mother, to inform him that she’d be unable to wire him rent money that month.  
           Max gulped as he stared at the e-mail with eyes like those of a deer caught in headlights. He made money from commissions, sure, but nowhere near enough to cover his rent. He was almost $400 short, his account balance at only $478. To make matters worse, he only had until April 2 nd—three days—to come up with the funds to cover the difference. In that instant, he realized A) how much he relied on his mother’s money and B) how completely and utterly screwed he was.  
           Not knowing what else to do, Max got up and started to pace. As he did, he ran his fingers through his unwashed brown hair. His phone dinged as he got a new text, but he took several minutes to check it. When he did, he found it was Cameron again.  
           “So, how are you?” he’d asked.  
            _What bloody timing. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he_ knows _I’m panicking right now._  
           Against his own better judgment, he chose now to pick the writer up on his offer. “Found out I might be screwed,” he responded in a casual sort of way.  
           “What’s the matter?”  
           “I need about $372 by the 2 nd, but I only make $200 at most when I open commissions, and that’s on a good week.”  
           “For what, rent?”  
            _Good guess._ “Yeah. I live in an apartment.”  
           “Oh. Yikes.”  
           “You can say that again. I’m freaking out, to be honest. Don’t think my landlord would have any issue kicking me out.”  
           “What are you going to do?”  
           “No clue, mate. I don’t even know if there’s a point in opening commissions. I’ve already got so many to do next month . . .”  
           “Try not to worry about it,” the writer, apparently an optimist, assured. “Things aren’t as grim as they seem.”  
            _Easy for you to say_ , Max thought.  
           A few hours later and it was past midnight. Max had spent most of this time worrying. Though he did make himself mac and cheese at some point, he ended up putting it into the fridge for later. He was too nervous to eat. Deep down, he knew that Cameron was likely right: everything would turn out fine. But he was a pessimist, and a realist even more so. It was a real possibility to him that his landlord would kick him out the instant he suggested not being able to pay rent. The thought terrified him. Where would he go? Back home, with his parents? To stay in the same house as his money-grubbing father again?  
            _I’d rather kill myself._  
           Falling asleep that night was harder than the last, even with Cameron texting him reassurance.  
           “You’ll be fine,” he affirmed, and, “Everything will be okay,” and, “She’ll be right,” and, “Don’t worry.”  
           Max had nightmares that night, but when he jolted awake at eight in the morning, he couldn’t remember much them. He checked his phone. Cameron had stopped texting him at a little past two in the morning, but had asked if he was awake at half past six. He decided not to answer yet, instead standing up. He’d forgotten to take off his jeans, had left his pale blue hoodie draped over the back of the chair. As he put it on, he realized that he’d also forgotten to turn off his laptop. It was in sleep mode, but still the webcam’s light was on.  
            _Definitely a hardware issue, then._  
           For a while he only sat there and stared at the dimmed laptop screen. Then he woke it up. He felt like he should check his bank account to confirm how screwed he was, so he did. His grogginess disappeared all at once when he saw his account balance.  
           $928.  
           He blinked once, then twice, then rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t imagining the numbers on his screen.  
            _That . . . That’s not possible. Last night I only had $470-something, didn’t I?_  
           Flustered, he checked his recent account activity. At 2:30 AM on the dot, he’d received a deposit of $450, forwarded through from PayPal. The only way this could be possible was . . .  
           With shaky hands, Max logged into his Ko-fi account. He mistyped his password the first attempt and cursed, but got it right on the second try. Sure enough, he’d received an anonymous donation at 2:05 AM. The donator had purchased 1,350 coffees for him at $3 each, adding up to $450. Max didn’t think this miracle could get any better until he noticed the note left with the generous gift. When he read it, he almost cried.  
           “I hope this helps. Keep up the amazing work! – CF”.

 


	5. Voice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 1 (January 11th, 2018): General touch-ups.  
> Originally posted on April 28th, 2017.

It took Max a few minutes to regain any sense of composure, but when he did, the first thing he did was text Cameron. He started his question with “Did you”, but decided against it. Of course he did. The proof was right in front of him in the form of his initials at the end of the donation note. So, with nothing else to say, too stunned to form a coherent sentence, Max simply wrote: “Oh my God.”  
           “Surprised?” Cameron asked with a winking emote. “I told you not to worry, didn’t I?”  
           Max couldn’t even begin to fathom why anyone would give him so much money on a whim. “Why?”  
           “You seemed stressed out last night. I couldn’t let a good guy like you suffer like that.”  
           “But what about you?”  
           “Oh, I’ve got more money than I know what to do with. I’d be more than happy to give you more if you need. I mean, what’s the point of having a lot of something if you can’t share?”  
           When Max felt his jaw hanging open, he snapped it back shut.  
            _This can’t be real, can it? By pure fluke, I’ve befriended the most generous rich guy I’ve ever seen. It has to be a bluff, right? Fake money, something?_  
           Deciding it would be rude to probe for the man’s income, he instead asked, “Do you do something other than write?”  
           “Well, I was in medical school for a bit, but I’m taking a year off.”  
            _Christ, he_ is _rich._  
           “I get most of my money from my father. He’s a heart surgeon.”  
           “Wow . . .” Max fawned. It was a shameful trait of his: his desire to be financially secure. While Cameron’s wealth had most of him unfazed, there was a tiny part of him trying to figure out a way to get more of it from him. His desire to be a decent person, though, overrode his greed, as it usually did. It only bothered him that there was even a part of him that went against his good disposition to begin with.  
           “I’m curious,” the wealthy young man said. “What do your parents do, Max?”  
           The introvert felt his mood sour. His parents weren’t a good topic for him. He’d left to live on his own against his mother’s wishes because of his father. In fact, his father was the reason that he needed Cameron’s money to begin with.  
           Mr. Logan Aleshire was a compulsive gambler. He loved the rush of risking it all with the promise of riches if he was good enough. The problem being that, well, he _wasn’t_ good enough. He hadn’t won more a single time in at least seventeen years. The one time he had won, it’d been for an empty pot. Hannah kept telling her husband to stop, to which he kept saying he would. But it was always only a matter of time before funds started pouring from her bank account like water down a drain.  
           Max had left when his father stole his wallet one night got into _his_ bank account. $300 saved up from commissions, gone in seconds. The shouting match the next morning was one that people the next street over could’ve heard. Only a few days later, he’d moved out, into the apartment he lived in now.  
           “My mother’s a real estate agent,” Max finally answered.  
           “That’s cool!” Cameron gushed.  
            _Not really_ , Max thought to himself.  
           “Your father?”  
           “He’s unemployed,” was the nicest answer, thus the one that Max chose.  
           “Not quite the conventional family, then?” Whether this was a joke or not, Max realized it was somewhat of a controversial comment to make. He didn’t take offense at it, though, because he agreed.  
           “You could say that.”  
           After a beat, Cameron asked, “I’d like to hear your voice. Could we continue this conversation in a phone call?”  
           Max had to admit: he was curious to find out what Cameron sounded like, too. “Sure, sounds good to me.”  
           A few seconds later, his ringtone started. Sure enough, it was Cameron calling. He answered. Anxious all of the sudden, he was slow in bringing the phone up to his ear.  
           “Max?”  
           Max felt his heart melt. Not only did Cameron look handsome, but his voice was deep and smooth as silk. Hearing that voice say his name sent a shiver down his spine; he couldn’t help but let out a deep exhale. “Wow,” he found himself thinking. “Wow, wow. _Wow_.”  
           It wasn’t until Cameron let out a hearty laugh that he realized he’d whispered those thoughts right into the phone. “Oh God,” he panicked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean, like . . . I just . . .”  
           “It’s fine, it’s fine,” Cameron assured. He actually sounded pleased, if not somehow relieved. “I’m glad you like the sound of my voice. Yours is nice as well. Is that an Australian accent I hear?”  
           Max let out a nervous chuckle. “Uh, yeah . . . Yeah, I’m, uh, from Brisbane.”  
           “Brisbane?” He sounded concerned. “Is that where you are now?”  
           “Ha, uh, no, no. I live in, um . . . Boston. Yeah.” The Aussie wasn’t sure why he was so flustered. It was like he was talking to a pretty girl for the first time.  
            _Get it together, Max_ , he scolded himself in his head, making sure that this time he didn’t say it under his breath.  
           “Say my name?”  
           Max thought this was an odd request. But then he realized: _what the hell do I know? I hardly ever speak to anyone._ “Cameron,” he obliged the request, unable to mask the slight quiver in his voice.  
           “It sounds so good when you say it,” gushed the writer. Before Max could react to how uncomfortable that comment made him, he asked, “So. What do you say we get to know each other some more?”  
           They spoke for three hours—until eleven in the morning—about various subjects. Max learned that Cameron had a Bachelor of Arts degree in behavioral psychology, earned at Carnegie Mellon. He admitted that, though it was only a four year program, he’d earned it a year late due to skipping out to help his father. It made Max embarrassed to admit that he’d never gone to any post-secondary school, but Cameron washed it away.  
           “You were right to skip it,” he assured, amused. “Everything I learned in university, I could’ve learned online for free.”  
           Max chuckled. “So I’ve heard. Why do people still go, then?”  
           “I guess because people have an easier time when they can _prove_ they learned something.”  
           “Hmm. Yeah, good point.”  
           “Anyway. Tell me about yourself, Max.”  
           “Ha, ha. There’s not much to say.”  
           “What are your other friends like?”  
           “Other friends?” Max found himself a bit taken aback by the question. “I, uh . . . I don’t have any. I only have Stacey. And I guess you, now, too.”  
           “Wait, wait, wait. You’re still friends with your ex, even after she tried to control you? Even after she _broke up_ with you?”  
           “Well, yeah. I mean, until you came around, she was all I had.”  
           As if disappointed, Cameron sighed. “Look, I’ll teach you how to start being more outgoing, all right?”  
           “Nah, that’s, uh, that’s fine.” Max tittered. “I’m fine with only having two friends. Less trouble for me.”  
           “Sure, but it feels good to talk with others, doesn’t it? Here’s what you do, Max:”—he paused—“let go of your inhibitions.”  
           Something about those five words, the way Cameron said them, made them reverberate in Max’s mind. There was an intensity to them that highlighted their importance. He was somehow certain these words would follow him to the grave, creating some huge impact in his life before then. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say they felt like they were foreshadowing something dark.  
            _Shut up, Max. That’s your paranoia talking._  
           “Compliment the random people you meet outside. Say hi every so often.”  
           Max wrinkled his face in simultaneous uncertainty and disgust. As if sensing this, Cameron continued through a laugh, “Hear me out! You might think people will think you’re weird if you do that, but believe me when I say this: people _love_ to be noticed. If you make them feel welcome by starting a conversation or by complimenting them, I promise you nothing bad will come of it. You’ll feel better, they’ll feel better, and who knows—you might even make someone’s day.”  
           While Max considered Cameron’s words, he was still on the fence about it. When he imagined someone complimenting _him_ , it only put him on edge.  
            _Someone complimenting me out of the blue like that_ must _have ulterior motives. Am I wrong to think that way?_  
           “I don’t know, Cameron. It seems pretty strange to me.”  
           “Give it a shot with a cashier or something next time you go shopping. You’d be surprised.”  
           Mr. Diefenbach popped into Max’s mind. _Is there even anything to compliment the old man on? What would I say? “Nice beard”?_  
           “Promise me you’ll give it a shot.”  
           Max exhaled. “Fine, I guess . . .”  
           “ _Prom_ ise me.”  
           “I promise, I’ll . . . _try_.”  
           “Good. Ach, listen—I’ve got family things to attend to. Talk later?”  
           “Uh, yeah. Sure.”  
           “Thanks for understanding. Bye, Max.”  
           “Bye.”  
           After hearing the line drop, Max pulled the phone away from his ear. For a moment he sat there staring into space, thinking about Cameron’s suggestions.  
            _“Let go of your inhibitions” . . . The thought of how he said it alone makes me feel weird. Kind of . . ._ nice _weird, but weird nonetheless. What did he mean by that? I’m certain there was a hidden meaning to it . . ._  
           His phone dinged, pulling his attention onto it. It was one final text from Cameron, before he presumably left to preoccupy himself.  
           “I love the sound of your voice. I’ll call again tonight if I can. Have a good day!”  
           Max shivered, shook his head. He got up and microwaved his macaroni from the night before, then started eating it. As he did, he watched his favorite streamer: a young Ukrainian gamer named Val Kozel, a.k.a. “Valcupine”. He was speed-running a game that Max was vaguely familiar with.  
           Max had found himself watching a lot of Val’s videos as of late, but he’d always strayed away from his regular vlogs. He only like watching Val’s speed-runs and let’s plays because he didn’t think the guy’s commentary unbearable. Plus, the fact that Val had a heavy accent made him more interesting to listen to somehow.  
           When he’d finished his meal, he stood up and paced. He couldn’t stop thinking about Cameron for some reason. There was a heavy feeling in his chest that forced him to let out a sigh. To his own confusion, he was still flustered.  
            _I want to hear him say my name again . . ._  
           By ten that night, he’d expected to have relaxed, but he hadn’t. In fact, as the day wore on and it grew ever closer to eleven, he only felt worse. By then, his discomfort had evolved into something different—a feeling that embarrassed him even though he was alone in the apartment.  
            _I’m so confused . . . I know I’m straight! But . . ._  
           After downloading the PDF onto his phone and looking at Cameron’s headshot again, he realized that his stupid, nineteen-year-old body needed release. It didn’t seem to care if Cameron was a guy; his overall attractiveness was all that mattered. There he was, sitting on his bed in the dark, biting his free fist as he stared at Cameron’s headshot.  
            _This is stupid_ , he thought as he tried to resist, _and weird. This is stupid, weird, and creepy. Not to mention sudden!_  
           It wasn’t that Max had never masturbated. Of course he had, more than a few times, as a horny, curious teenager. But on the verge of his twenties, he’d thought he was beyond it. Plus, he’d never done it while thinking of anyone in particular, never mind while staring at their picture. He felt like a creep.  
            _If this is my brain’s way of exploring my sexuality, it sure has a fucked up way of going about it! Oh, I hope Cameron doesn’t call me now . . ._  
           Max laid on his side and hid himself under the covers. Even though no one would walk in on him, since he lived on his own, it helped keep his shame in check. He spat in his palm. Soon after, he was panting hard and well on his way to completion. It was getting unbearably hot under the covers. His biggest problem was that he had a tendency to be awfully loud. When he realized his mouth was hanging open, he forced himself to bite his lip so he couldn’t moan or scream too loud. He was a quivering mess.  
           A twitch shook him when his phone dinged. It was Cameron texting him, of course. “Listen, Max . . .”  
           Max froze best he could, but couldn’t stop his shaking.  
            _Oh, God. Not now. At least you’re not calling me, but stop texting me! I don’t want to imagine your voice right now . . . !_  
           He was so close, but still reluctant about finishing what he’d started. If it wasn’t already, completing would put his sexuality in jeopardy. Picturing Cameron saying his text aloud wasn’t helping him to hold back. Despite this, he opened the text anyway, though it made him feel even weirder about what he was doing.  
           “I know this might be coming way out of left field, especially since we’ve only known each other for two days now . . . but I’ve never been the type to keep my feelings hidden.”  
           Max was only half able to comprehend what Cameron was saying. His heart was racing. What did he mean?  
            _If he’s saying what I think he’s saying, then I’m definitely going to . . ._ His thoughts hitched there. It was too shameful for him to even think about finishing now, but he wasn’t sure it was preventable.  
           “I like you, Max. A lot. I’m not sure how this happened. It’s so sudden. I hardly even know you. But I want to give us a try, if you’d consider me.”  
           It was, indeed, sudden. Very sudden. It might’ve taken Max aback were he not currently jerking off to his picture. All at once, upon reading Cameron’s abrupt confession, the Aussie completed with a choke. The sequential tensing and releasing of every muscle in his body was pure bliss. So much so, that for a sweet moment he was almost able to forget his shame. It was during that moment that he again looked at his phone.  
           “I want to meet you in person,” Cameron had written.  
           With bleary eyes, Max wrote an impulsive response: “Okay.”

 


	6. Promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 1 (January 11th, 2018): General touch-ups.  
> Originally posted on April 28th, 2017.

He was with Cameron, talking to him somewhere. The surroundings didn’t matter much. All he cared about was his infatuation with the handsome man by his side. A stranger approached and asked something. Without missing a beat, Max answered, glowing with confidence. As long as he had Cameron by his side, he felt he could do anything. His inhibitions were non-existent. He was happier than he’d been in years.  
           That was when the rabbit showed up. It was as tall as Cameron, but its long pink ears made it seem ever taller. When he saw it looking around nearby, something in his gut told him that it was searching for them. The ridiculous appearance of Cameron’s creation didn’t soothe him in the slightest. Something about Bashful walking around in the real world mortified him.  
           Before it caught sight of them, Max grabbed Cameron’s arm and pulled him along as he took off running. He found himself in a stairwell, zooming up it as fast as he could but it feeling like he was moving in slow motion. Cameron took off ahead of him. His head was spinning, filling with dread. The stairwell never ended. He could hear the patter of rabbit feet steadily approaching. One of Max’s worst fears was the sensation of being chased by someone—or some _thing_ in this case—that he couldn’t outrun.  
           When he jolted awake in a cold sweat, relief washed over him. He struggled to catch his breath. His covers were a mess, with him only half underneath them. The nightmare still fresh in his memory, Max reached down to the floor for his phone. He hadn’t plugged it in, so its battery was close to empty. The first thing he saw upon turning it on were the texts between himself and Cameron.  
           “I want to meet you in person.”  
           “Okay.”  
            _Shit._  
           Max cringed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. His little experiment from last night came flooding back to him. Cameron sure had odd timing; his texts always seemed to come at either the perfect time or the worst time. It was almost like he knew exactly what Max was doing at any moment.  
           He read over his friend’s texts once more with a better eye. It was somewhat dismaying to find that he hadn’t imagined Cameron’s confession. The rich writer actually had revealed that he was beginning to develop feelings for him. Max felt awkward about the whole thing. He’d agreed to meet Cameron in person, but found himself regretting it.  
            _Would it be rude to take it back now? Cameron hasn’t replied to the text. What does the silence mean? Shit, what if he’s on his way to Boston or something?_  
           Whatever the case, Max wasn’t ready to meet him. He figured that he’d better tell him now rather than let him do something reckless. That thought led Max to another: where did Cameron live? What were the odds of Omegle pairing him up with a random person within a hundred mile radius?  
           Max took a deep breath to steady himself before writing Cameron a text. “I’m not ready to meet you yet,” he confessed, deciding to get straight to the point. “I’m sorry if I led you on. I was half-asleep when I said yes.”  
           Cameron didn’t respond. He began a reply, but the ellipses bubble disappeared as though he’d decided against it.  
           Before Max could start worrying about this, his phone started to ring in his hand. Stacey was calling him. He looked at the time: 7:30 in the morning. Deciding (and hoping) that Cameron would text him back soon enough, he sighed and answered her call. His voice was croaky from sleep as he began with, “Yep?”  
           “Oh, sorry,” she said. “Did I wake you?”  
           “No,” Max replied as he rubbed his eye with his free hand. “I woke up a minute ago on my own.”  
           “Ah, okay. Listen.” She sounded excited about something. “You want to go out for breakfast with me at you-know-where?”  
           Max hummed in fatigue. Stacey was talking about a nice little restaurant a few blocks away from her house. Though they’d gone to it together several times and even had their first date there, neither of them could ever remember what it was actually called.  
           “What’s the occasion?” he asked her with suspicion in his dry voice.  
           “Does there need to be an occasion?”  
           “You wouldn’t sound so eager otherwise.”  
           “You got me,” she confessed. “I have some good news. It doesn’t affect you at all, but I’m super excited, so I want to talk to someone.”  
           “And you can’t come to my apartment, why?”  
           “I’m hungry, and we haven’t been to that restaurant in ages.”  
           “Fair enough.”  
           “Besides, I _am_ at your apartment.”  
           Max narrowed his eyes. “What? Why?”  
           “Uh, to pick you up, stupid. I’m standing outside your front door. Don’t leave me out here too long.”  
           The artist sighed. “I’ll get dressed.”  
           Before he knew it, he sitting across from Stacey in the restaurant. She snapped her fingers at him, causing him to snap from the trance he’d been lost in the entire way there.  
           “Take off your coat,” she scolded lightly.  
           He nodded a bit and did as she asked. They already had drinks, and Stacey sipped on hers as she eyed her ex like a hawk. They both knew he was out of it. He felt unrested, for one, but most of all his mind kept running back to Cameron. The writer hadn’t said so much as a word since he turned him down. Max didn’t know if he’d said the right thing. Was Cameron upset with him?  
           “Hey. You okay?”  
           Max looked up at Stacey, startled by her voice. “Huh?” he asked without any social grace.  
           This didn’t faze Stacey, who had long adjusted to his curtness. “You seem more detached from reality than usual.”  
           The Aussie shook his head in an attempt to wake himself up, then ran a cold hand down his face. “I’m okay,” he insisted. “No worries. What did you want to tell me?”  
           “You know how I’ve always wanted to be a hair stylist?”  
           “Yeah?”  
           “Well, someone finally accepted me!”  
           To his own surprise, Max didn’t find Stacey’s gushing intolerable. “Oh. Uh, congrats!”  
           “I start next Tuesday,” she said as she stirred her drink with her straw.  
           “Why not Monday?”  
           She shrugged. “Beats me, but I’m not complaining.”  
           “I remember how you always used to beg to do shit to my hair.”  
           “Ugh, your hair still drives me mad. I just want to grab it and even it all out.”  
           “Not gonna happen,” he taunted with a smirk.  
           Stacey laughed and took another meek sip of her drink. There was a beat, then the tone of the conversation shifted. To further accent it, the woman conceded, “You know, I’ve missed you, Max.”  
           Max didn’t say anything. Instead, he decided to let Stacey continue to talk. As she did, she stared at the ice cubes in her drink as if they had answers.  
           “We don’t hang out as much as we used to. That sucks, because you’re my best friend. I know I’m annoying sometimes, and that I want what’s best for my friends a little bit too aggressively, but . . .” She blinked a few times, blinking back tears, and gave a dismissive wave of her hand. After another sip of her drink, she concluded, “Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not asking for us to get back together or anything. I miss you, that’s all. I want to see you more often than I do now.”  
           He was going to let her words to drop without comment, but then Cameron’s suggestion popped back into his head.  
           “ _If you make them feel welcome . . . who knows—you might even make someone’s day._ ”  
           Stacey was already aware that he wasn’t going to reply. She took a deep breath through her nose and again used her straw to stir her drink. When she opened her mouth to change the subject, though, Max did as well.  
           “I miss you, too,” he blurted.  
           It was obvious from her expression he’d stunned her. She hadn’t expected Max to share her feelings; even if he did, she hadn’t expected him to admit it. “You do?”  
           “Yeah,” he said. He was awkward about it, of course, since he’d never said anything like this before. Talking about his feelings wasn’t something he made a habit of, but he wanted to keep his promise to Cameron by making someone happy. “I know it, uh, might not seem like it, but . . . I do enjoy being friends with you, Stace. Despite all those, uh, ‘flaws’ that you pointed out. But you know, I say ‘flaws’ with quotation marks, because you seem to think they are, but I mean . . . they’re not, are they?”  
           With a quizzical look on her face, Stacey cocked her head to the side. It looked like she didn’t want to say anything, lest she scare him out of talking. The truth, though, was that Max found himself struggling. He was pretty sure his rambling wasn’t coming across as anything other than ranting.  
           “I mean, they’re . . . They’re what make you . . . well, _you_. Sure, you don’t know when to shut up sometimes, and you care way too much about what other people do, but . . . You do it because you care, and honestly, I . . . I mean I guess I kind of like that about you.”  
           Stacey kept staring at him, which made him worried that he’d said all the wrong things. It wouldn’t surprise him if he’d made a total mess of it. He anticipated her getting up and leaving, perhaps not without splashing her drink on him. But then, it happened: Stacey smiled.  
           “Well,” she said. “That was unexpected. Not unwelcome, but . . . a pleasant surprise. Are you sure you’re okay?”  
           The relief that Max felt knowing that Stacey had taken his little speech well was monumental. “Better than that,” he told her with a smile of his own.  
            _I remember when I used to think she was the prettiest girl in Boston . . . Hell, who am I kidding? I still think that. What happened to us?_ He kept this question to himself, though he knew she was thinking it, too.  
           After breakfast, Stacey drove him home. They agreed to meet again in a few days, then she left after telling him that she would call him tomorrow. The rest of the day of uneventful for Max. Cameron didn’t text him back. Stacey did, though.  
           “Thanks for what you said there,” she wrote. “It meant a lot to me.”  
           With a small smile, too anxious over Cameron to feel happy, he replied, “No worries, Stace.”  
           The following day, the 2 nd, Max went back to the convenience store to use the ATM there. Having kept his promise to Cameron in mind, when Mr. Diefenbach greeted him, he returned the sentiment for once.  
           “Max! Good to see you!”  
           “Good to see you, too, Mr. Diefenbach.”  
           Mr. Diefenbach also seemed surprised. “Having a good day?”  
           “So far,” Max answered. Somewhat ironic to him was that he wasn’t; Cameron hadn’t responded and Stacey hadn’t called him like she’d said. Stress was one of the strongest emotions he felt at the moment, second only to anxiety. After taking out rent money to give to his landlord, he decided to ask Mr. Diefenbach, “Anyway, how are you?”  
           With his regular toothless grin, Mr. Diefenbach answered, “Great, great. My granddaughter, she is having wedding soon.”  
           “Oh, really?” Max’s surprise was genuine; it was news to him that Mr. Diefenbach had a daughter, let alone a _grand_ daughter. Though, he supposed he could’ve guessed from how old the man looked. “Well, best of luck to them.”  
           Mr. Diefenbach nodded. “So proud of her.”  
           Max paid his landlord a visit and gave him the money. Then he returned to his apartment. Once inside, he draped his coat over the couch as usual and looked at his phone. Stacey still hadn’t even tried to call him. Cameron was also as unresponsive as ever. He sighed. Had he lost both of them somehow?  
           “Stace,” he texted his ex, “you there?” He spent a few hours listening to music and working on Cameron’s request before looking at his phone again.  
            _She hasn’t even read it. I’ve been sending her texts all day, and she hasn’t looked at any of them. Where is she? She’s not the type to leave her phone unattended. She checks it like clockwork. If she’s upset somehow, she would’ve at least left my texts on read as passive-aggression. It doesn’t make any sense . . ._  
           It was getting dark outside by the time his phone dinged. The sound startled him. Frantic, he looked at the screen.  
           “How good are you at photo editing?” Cameron had asked him.  
           Max blinked a few times. _He disappears for two days_ , he thought, _then comes back out of the blue asking me how good I am at_ photo editing _?_  
           On the defensive, he replied, “Where were you?”  
           The writer ignored the question. “I took some pictures in the dark and I need someone to salvage them. I couldn’t use flash, but they’re important.” He put spaces between the letters of “important” to stress the word.  
           Max sighed in defeat. He wasn’t pleased, but at least Cameron was talking to him now. There was hope. “I can’t promise anything, but I can give it a shot.”  
           “I’d appreciate it, thanks.”  
           His phone dinged in his hand with a new notification: an e-mail. What struck Max as a tad odd was that the e-mail wasn’t from Cameron. At least, it didn’t _say_ it was. Rather, it was from a foreign Outlook address.  
            _What the hell?_  
           He checked the e-mail on his laptop. There were three attachments, all dark photos. The subject line was “Pictures”. The body read, with a smiley face, “Here they are.”  
            _All right, that’s weird . . . Whatever._  
           If Max tilted his screen somewhat, he could make out something a little different in each of picture. He couldn’t make out what, but the fact that there _was_ contrast made him think that levelling the images could work.  
            _Ding_ : another text from Cameron. “Could you fix them in the order I sent them?”  
           It was an odd request, but he expected nothing less from Cameron, so he decided to oblige. “Sure.” After downloading them, he opened each one at a time in Photoshop.  
           “Tell me what you think each image is of so I can confirm. I need to know if they’re at all distinguishable.”  
           The first image wasn’t so easy to fix. Since he wasn’t sure what he was trying to find, he couldn’t decide on what levelling setup to use. So, instead, he decided to grab the middle and rightmost input level pins, moving them all the way over to the left. The image lit up, highly contrasted but as clear as he was going to be able to get it. It was then that he saw the legs. The picture seemed to be of someone’s legs on a dark-ish bed sheet or something. Max wasn’t too sure.  
           “Well, I can’t fix them, but . . . The first one is of legs?”  
           “Yep!” confirmed Cameron.  
           Despite his confusion, Max did the next image the same way. He raised a brow at this one, for what he saw almost looked like the exposed body of a woman. There were dark patches all over the image that seemed to be on her. The contrast made the brighter edges of them red. All of a sudden, Max felt nervous.  
            _Stab wounds_ , he thought to himself. _Those are fucking stab wounds. That’s blood._  
           He couldn’t see the woman’s head in the image, but he knew in his gut that he was looking at a corpse. His heart was pounding in his chest. What the hell had Cameron sent him?  
           “A woman?”  
           “Yes, and?”  
           “She’s . . . bleeding?”  
           “Close enough! Do the last one now,” Cameron ordered with a winking emote.  
           “What is this, Cameron?”  
           “Do it and you’ll find out!”  
           His breathing becoming faster and more labored, Max contrasted the last image. When he figured out what it was— _who_ it was—he stared at his screen in terror. It was a face, the face of the woman from the prior images.  
           “Well?” urged Cameron.  
           Max tore his eyes from his screen and looked at his phone. It took him what felt like ages to pick it up in his shaky hands. Trembling, he typed his answer. He hoped that he was wrong, that Cameron would ask him what he was on about, but he knew that he wasn’t, and that he wouldn’t.  
           “Stacey?”  
           Cameron replied with a smiley face. “She really is the prettiest girl in Boston, isn't she?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read a bit about what happened to Stacey in _[Knock](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10570485)_.


	7. Confession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 1 (January 12th, 2018): General touch-ups.  
> Originally posted on April 29th, 2017.

In his head, Max was screaming. He couldn’t believe what was going on. It had to be a lie. He closed his texts with Cameron, going instead to Stacey’s. She still hadn’t read them. But that didn’t mean she was dead. She wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She _couldn’t_ be.  
           “Stacey!” he sent. “Please answer me! Are you all right?”  
           “Don’t bother,” Cameron texted him abruptly. “I left her phone at her house.”  
           Max paid the writer no mind. He tried to call Stacey. It rung once, then twice. Each ring following that made Max more and more anxious.  
           “Pick up,” he begged under his breath. “Oh, God, _please_ pick up . . .”  
           “Hey there, this is Stacey Eichel! I’m not taking calls right now, so leave me a message!” Stacey’s voice, which used to bother him, now sounded like a choir of angels. Unfortunately, this was only her voicemail. He ended the call rather than leave a message, though as soon as he did he went into a full-scale panic.  
            _She’s dead, isn’t she? The pictures from Cameron are true. This isn’t some sort of sick joke. She’s gone . . . Did Cameron kill her?_  
           That was what threw him for a real loop: Cameron’s involvement. Not only did he have pictures, but he seemed calm . . . if not _pleased_. Cameron was the nicest, most generous man that he’d ever met, but now he’d killed a woman!  
           His phone started to ring. It was Cameron. In a stunned silence, he accepted the call and brought the phone back up to his ear.  
           “You aren’t taking this as well as I expected,” complained Cameron.  
           Max gawked at the heartless words. “You thought I’d take this _well_?”  
           “She wasn’t a nice girl.”  
           “What are you saying, Cameron? How the hell would you know? She was too! I just—I can’t believe you’d do this . . . I can’t believe _anyone_ would do _this_!” As he shouted, he got to his feet, pacing around behind his chair and palming at his hair, mussing it up.  
           “Well, at least you got to have a heart-to-heart with her the last time you saw her.”  
           It took Max a moment to realize what was wrong with that comment. “How . . . How do you—?”  
           “I’m glad you take your phone everywhere with you. Those were some sweet things you said to her, Max. How much of it was true?”  
           The Aussie’s mind reeled, horror intensifying tenfold. Somehow, Cameron had been watching him. “How did you get into my phone?”  
           “Check your e-mail.”  
           “How the _hell_ did you get into my phone?”  
           “ _Check_. Your. E-mail.”  
           Max started to pull the phone away from his ear.  
           “No. On your laptop. Sit down and look.”  
           With reluctance, he sat back down in his rolling office chair. He checked his e-mail in a haze of terror. Sure enough, there was a new message from Cameron’s Outlook address. It had no subject and no body, but several attachments. All but one of them were pictures. In his anxiety, he couldn’t bear to figure out what they were from their thumbnails alone.  
           “Click the first one. Skim through.”  
           Max obeyed. The first image opened. To his surprise, he found that it was a photo of him. He was sitting, face lit up by the screen, in front of his laptop. When he changed to the next one, it was the same, but now he was staring at the screen with one hand holding his tablet’s pen. Over and over, multiple images, some even of only his chair. It soon cycled over back to the first one. Max then looked at his webcam with wide eyes.  
            _The light. Cameron’s using my webcam._  
           “Oh, don’t look so surprised,” Cameron laughed, confirming that he was watching Max even now. “I mean, you’re the one who neglected to update Adobe Reader.” Seeing the confusion that followed on his face, he explained, “Security issues. I embedded a way to link your computer to mine. I can do whatever I like, see?”  
           Max watched as his cursor moved on its own. It closed the attachment gallery, then scrolled the window down. The last attachment was a video. His cursor hovered over it for a moment before downloading it to the desktop. Then, the cursor moved to the download bar when it finished, to click and open it.  
           “This is my favorite of everything I caught. I didn’t think the exploit for phones would work, but I guess you really hate software updates.”  
           He felt himself break into a cold sweat. When the video opened in his preferred media player, his cursor maximized the window. The introvert stared at the screen—at what Cameron had caught him doing. He wasn’t sure what he felt. Was it embarrassment? Fear? Both?  
           “You struck me as a modest guy, but here I found you a few nights ago, pleasuring yourself. It was a real shock, but not unwelcome, I guess. What made it even better, though, was when I checked what you were looking at.”  
           Max knew his face was flushing, lips quivering. Cameron had seen everything. His texts were so well-timed because he _did_ know what Max was doing at any given moment.  
           “You found me that attractive? That touched me. So I asked to meet you. You said okay. And by the time I figure out your address, you go and change your mind. I went to all that trouble, but you still weren’t sure if I was true. So, to prove myself to you, I did you a favor and got your ex-girlfriend out of the way.”  
           The Aussie was speechless from fright. He couldn’t stop staring at his laptop, though he no longer paid attention to the video playing on an endless loop.  
           “You do know why I got her out of the picture, right?”  
           He didn’t answer.  
           “Nah, it’s better if you don’t know.”  
           “No, tell me,” Max breathed. He wanted to know what reason Cameron had for taking away his only other friend, though he knew he’d regret asking.  
           “Did you ever go all the way with her?”  
           “What?”  
           “I went through her phone. Man, she sure had a lot of texts with another guy. I looked back to around the time you two were dating. She was so sexually frustrated that she wound up starting an affair. After she broke up with you, she immediately hooked up with this other lover of hers, the skank.”  
           Those words hurt Max to hear, but didn’t surprise him; he’d always suspected Stacey had had an affair. Besides, from the standpoint of a man no longer dating her, he didn’t care about that.  
           “She didn’t deserve to _die_ for it!” he cried. “She wanted sex and I didn’t want to give it to her! Of _course_ she should go to someone else! Was that so wrong that she needed to _die_?”  
           “Who _do_ you want to give it to, Max? Me?”  
           Flustered and anything but amused, Max roared, “Answer the bloody question, you sick son of a bitch!”  
           “Might want to keep your voice down. Mr. Diefenbach might hear you down there.”  
           Max snapped his mouth shut. Somehow, Cameron not only knew about Mr. Diefenbach, but also that the old man lived right below him.  
           “You shouldn’t keep location tracking on. Your phone’s quite accurate at that. So, yes, I know where you live. And yes, I asked the old man at the convenience store about you earlier today. He told me that you were his upstairs neighbor. Apartment 409 is yours, right?”  
           “I’ll call the cops,” Max mumbled.  
           “Don’t make me frame you for your ex’s murder, Max. You have no idea how easy that’d be for me.”  
           “The pictures . . . You sent me those pictures. They’re on your computer. I have proof!”  
           “Who do you think the police are more inclined to listen to? If I pay them enough money, I can get them to incarcerate even a complete stranger. Besides, you’re wrong: the pictures aren’t on my computer. They never were.”  
           “But, you—”  
           “Took them on Stacey’s phone and sent them to a temporary e-mail, then deleted them from her phone. Transferred them to a backup hard drive and sent them, through a VPN, on a new e-mail. Then, I destroyed the hard drive. I don’t have anything.”  
           “Well, th-the texts. This call!”  
           “Come off it, Max. I know you won’t report anything to the police.”  
           “What makes you so sure of that?”  
           “I’ve been studying you, your behavior. No, calling the cops would be too out of character for you, Max. You’re afraid they won’t believe you—that calling them will only get _you_ into trouble.”  
           Max tried to think of a comeback, but had nothing. He didn’t want to admit it, but Cameron was bang on.  
           “I’m going to visit you tomorrow. If you leave your apartment before I arrive, believe me, I’ll know.”  
           Silence. Max didn’t know what to do.  
           “I’ll see you then.”  
           It wasn’t until he heard at least a whole minute of dial tone that he finally pulled his phone away. He had to leave. But how could he? He had nowhere to go. If he called his parents, texted or even e-mailed them, who knew what Cameron would do to him—to them. He started thinking, in a frantic haze, of ways to get out of this.  
            _I could turn off my phone and take off running. But no, that wouldn’t work: I reckon Cameron would check-in via text. If I don’t reply, he’d know that I left. How about turning off location tracking and making a break for it? No, Cameron can see through phone’s cameras. What if I disconnect my phone from Wi-Fi and mobile data? Then he’d notice that he can’t access the cameras anymore._  
           Max looked at his webcam lens. Cameron could still see him. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to cover the camera with something or not. If he did, it could cost him valuable time to think of a way out of this horrible situation.  
            _But what if there_ isn’t _a way out?_  
           Needless to say, he didn’t sleep that night. He spent most of the nighttime hours pacing the floor of his bedroom. The more he thought and the more fatigued he became, the more ridiculous and elaborate his plans.  
            _Use Telegram to send texts from my laptop. Get a program to loop footage of me in front of the computer, like in the movie_ Speed _. Leave the phone behind, run with the laptop._  
           Then, he remembered that his laptop wouldn’t be able to send or receive texts without Wi-Fi, which he wouldn’t have. If he was late to reply to even a single message because he didn’t have Wi-Fi, it would blow his cover.  
            _Shit!_  
           By eight in the morning, he wondered if he should accept his fate. There was a part of him that screamed to come up with a plan, but he’d tried. Every plan he thought up had a fatal flaw. Cameron was thorough, that much he knew. He still couldn’t believe how the man who’d seemed so innocent was actually a murderer. Cameron was almost the polar opposite of what he’d appeared to be.  
            _How could I have been so blind? There must’ve been signs. There had to have been!_  
           Determined to find what he’d missed, now focusing only on this, Max skimmed over his texts with Cameron. He took in every word, thinking about every tone, every way he could take them. Then, he got to the top—to the first two messages they’d exchanged.  
           “Hello? It’s Max.”  
           “Got you!”  
           He’d thought it was weird, but had decided to dismiss it. But now, sitting in his dark bedroom with both windows covered, staring down at the glowing screen, Max reconsidered. Those two words alone should’ve set off alarm bells in his head. Why hadn’t they? With anyone else, he would’ve panicked.  
            _By that point, it was already too late, though, wasn’t it?_  
           The more Max thought about it, the more he realized his fate was likely sealed the moment Omegle matched them. It was by random, of course, but just Max’s luck to get paired with a rich, hacking-master serial killer. It was bad luck . . . or was it? He shook his head.  
            _There’s no way that Cameron could’ve connected to me on purpose. Why would he? Could he even do that? I doubt even he could hijack an entire website. How would he have even known that I’d be on at that particular moment? No, the only thing that led to this was the random algorithm giving me the shaft._  
           By eleven, Max had an idea. He couldn’t use technology to contact anybody, but he still had a downstairs neighbor. If he could only get a message to Mr. Diefenbach, then he could get some help!  
           He’d been staring at his phone most of the day thus far. As he predicted, if he was away from it for too long, Cameron would start sending texts. But there was no way he could watch him all day right? He had to move away from his computer, or whatever he used to monitor him, at some point. All Max had to do was take a risk. If he could guess Cameron’s pattern, he could get out of his apartment, run downstairs to Mr. Diefenbach, and return to his apartment without Cameron knowing a thing.  
           The only problem were the microphones. He could unplug his computer’s, sure, but he couldn’t disable his phone’s.  
            _How would he know_ , he tried to convince himself, _that it wasn’t one of the doors inside the apartment? If I open the door and don’t close it until I get back, then how could Cameron tell them apart?_  
           He set his phone down on his pillow in an attempt to stifle the noise, then left the bedroom. If he was going to do this, he had to move fast. Cameron would check-in soon. Quick, but with caution, he pulled open his apartment’s door. He pushed it shut but didn’t close it, then speed-walked down the hall. Once in the staircase, he considered himself free to run. Holding onto the railing, the introvert ran only a few steps down before he stopped.  
           By his estimate, Cameron had texted him by now. Did he keep running for Mr. Diefenbach, or did he hurry back and confirm that he was still in the apartment?  
           Max suddenly considered the option of getting an auto-replier. If Cameron texted him twice and got the same reply, though . . .  
            _Shit, he can see what I do on the phone, anyway._  
           The brown-haired Aussie snapped out of it. He was so tired, thus unsure of how long it’d taken him to think about that. His mind then reminded him of something that made his entire escape attempt seem stupid.  
            _Mr. Diefenbach is at the convenience store right now._  
           Off Max went, sprinting on light feet back to his apartment. He was about to hurry back inside when a small detail on the doorframe caught his eye. Not that he’d ever done a thorough inspection of it, but something looked . . . off. Curious, he looked up to the topmost door hinge.  
           As it was rather conspicuous, Max was quick to notice the little black device taped crudely to the frame. When he squinted to see it better, he was even quicker to identify it.  
            _Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me._  
           Cameron knew his apartment number. He was also rich. It hadn’t even occurred to Max that he might consider setting up a wireless microphone somewhere.  
           No longer bothering to be quiet, Max pushed the door open with his foot and leaned against the frame. Then, he rubbed his forehead. Though he wasn’t sure why, he found himself smiling. He shook his head, then started to chuckle. Laughter bubbled up from his chest, a climax of stress and fear. He had to release it, lest it smother him from the inside.  
           “Well played, Cameron,” he hissed through a miserable cackle for the microphone to pick up. “Well _fucking_ played!”

 


	8. Visit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 1 (January 13th, 2018): General touch-ups. Slowed the pace somewhat on the sex scene; added some minor foreplay and a condom.  
> Originally posted on April 30th, 2017.

After Max finished his mental breakdown in the hallway, he returned to his bedroom and picked up his phone.  
           “Leaving so soon, then?” Cameron had asked.  
           “Changed my mind,” Max confessed. “I had a plan, but halfway through I realized it wouldn’t work.”  
           “I hear you found the microphone. Do you like it?”  
           “It’s clever, but no, not particularly.”  
           “You don’t seem pleased.”  
           Max, tired gray eyes half shut, sneered at the phone’s camera. “Did I seem pleased before?”  
           “I suppose not.”  
           Max sighed and lowered his hand. He left the bedroom, then opened the kitchen cupboard. If he was going to resign to his fate, he may as well make himself something to eat. He filled the pot with water before setting it on the stove. Then he poured himself a cup of pop. While he waited for the water to boil, he sat down on the couch. The cheap television in front of him was off, but he didn’t feel like turning it on, so he left it. With one hand holding his cup and the other on his head, Max groaned.  
           He was accepting his fate because he’d exhausted all his other options. Plus, he was overcome with exhaustion. He took a sip of his pop. Whatever was going to happen to him in a few hours was going to happen no matter what.  
           A few minutes later, he got up to pour macaroni into the pot. When he reached into his drawer for something to stir with, he stopped. His eyes had fallen onto his knife. He only had one; it was rather oversized, since he had a thing for huge knives. Something about them attracted him.  
            _Maybe I’m not as doomed as I think I am . . ._  
           Max shook his head and tore his eyes away from the glistening blade. He couldn’t believe what he was thinking; there was no way he could stab someone! Besides, he was too scrawny, the knife too big. He pictured it in his head: pulling the knife on Cameron. He watched himself get pinned to the wall, then Cameron ripped the knife from his hand and slit his throat with it. No, that wouldn’t work. It was too overt.  
            _Then again . . . it doesn’t have to be a knife._  
           Max opened another drawer and picked up a pair of scissors. With delicate swipes, he tested the edges and points of its blades. He pictured this: luring Cameron in with a false sense of security, making him feel welcome. Then, when he turns his back—scissors to the throat. It worked out a lot better. Even if Cameron fought back, the odds of delivering a fatal blow were in Max’s favor. All he needed was to put some weight behind his attack. He clutched the scissors close to his chest as his eyes stared off at nothing.  
            _Stabbing him might make me no different, but it's my only hope._  
           After he finished picking at his food, he sat down on the couch and stared up at the ceiling. He sat like that, trying not to fall asleep, until it got dark outside. Cameron didn’t seem interested in sending texts anymore. He’d stopped an hour or two ago. Max could only assume this meant he was on his way. He had the scissors hidden in his pocket, but now he’d spent at least thirty-four hours awake. Would he even have the strength to stab Cameron?  
            _He sure makes a point of showing up late_ , Max thought. It was nine o’clock at night. He continued his thought: _That was part of his plan, I reckon. He knows I’m exhausted now. He doesn’t think I’ll be able to fight._  
           An hour later, Max was about to give up waiting. By then, he thought that it’d only been a bluff. Right as he stood up to head back into the bedroom, though, he heard it.  
            _Footsteps . . . Footsteps in the hallway._ Max glanced at the door, eyes wide. _He’s coming._  
           The footsteps stopped on the other side of his door. He stayed where he was, frozen in place like a marble statue. A few long seconds of silence came and went. Then, on the door . . .  
            _Knock_.  
           Max shuddered. He’d been preparing himself for this all day, but realizing that Cameron was actually here now terrified him. The last thing he wanted to do was open the door and let this madman into his apartment. There it came again to haunt him, like a bad dream.  
            _Knock_.  
           Though every fiber of his being told him to run away, Max found himself stepping closer to the door. With a level of hesitance unknown to him until that moment, he reached for the lock. After a slow twist and consequential click, he pulled it open.  
           As expected, Cameron was standing there. He had to be at least six feet tall, which was about what Max had guessed his height to be. He looked the same as his headshot, doing the same handsome smile when his eyes fell onto the short Aussie.  
           “Max,” he greeted.  
            _God, his voice is even better in person._  
           The writer looked over Max’s head, inspecting his apartment from the doorway. Then he looked back down at him. “Can I come in?”  
           Max didn’t answer. He couldn’t even bring himself to meet Cameron’s gaze. It was all he had not to crumple to the floor a scared, shaking mess. After a few seconds more, he finally managed a meek nod and took two cautious steps back.  
           “Thanks,” Cameron crooned. He stepped inside after Max, closing the door and locking it behind himself. He took a better look at the apartment, as if trying to make sure that this was indeed where he’d seen Max last. Meanwhile, the artist tried to force himself to look at him. He was wearing a thin, short jacket of dark brown leather. As Max had suspected, he was quite muscular. If he wanted to, it would be easy for him to overpower him. His eyes were making their way up to examine Cameron’s face when the near-stranger cocked his head to look at him. This caused Max to whip his gaze to the floor.  
           “Nice place you’ve got here,” observed Cameron.  
           Max let out a quiet grunt of acknowledgement. His heart was in his throat; speaking was beyond his ability.  
           “I could get you better, though.”  
           This comment confused him, but he still kept his mouth shut. Cameron stepped closer, effectively trapping him with his back against a wall. In a gentle tone, he snickered and pointed out, “You’re trembling. Scared, right?” When he got no response, he brought his hand up and took hold of Max’s chin. He pulled the introvert’s face up to look at it, using his other hand to brush a strand of hair out of the way.  
           Max tried to make his eyes display only contempt, but even despite his fear and hatred, the close proximity was making him flustered. Part of him wanted to slump against Cameron’s chest and go to sleep. He had to remind himself that doing so would be suicide.  
           Satisfied somehow, Cameron grinned and patted Max’s cheek. Then he pulled away and turned his back. He took his time in strutting over to the windows, were covered by thinner curtains than the ones in the bedroom. It was as if he was taunting Max—daring him to try something. Max felt for the scissors in the left pocket of his hoodie. They were there. But before grabbing the handle, he reconsidered.  
            _Oh, who am I kidding? I can’t stab him! All he needs to do is turn around and grab my wrist to stop me. Even if he wasn’t stronger than me, I can’t bring myself to do something like that to someone. Not even someone like him, not even to avenge Stacey . . ._  
           So, instead, he looked back at the door. If he was quick enough, he could make a break for it. Anxious, he glanced back at Cameron. He was still examining the curtains . . . or whatever he was doing. If he was going to try escaping, now was the time.  
           Max inched closer to the door, keeping his eyes on Cameron as he did. When he reached it, he tried to unlock it again quietly, but, of course, it clicked. He watched Cameron tense at the sound. For a beat, both of them were still. The instant he saw the writer start to turn, he ripped the door open and sprinted out.  
           “Max!”  
           He ran as fast as he could, barreling into the stairwell so hard that he almost threw himself over the guardrail. It took him only a second to correct his trajectory, but a second was all Cameron needed, careening in behind him. Max had to focus so he wouldn’t slip. Before he could turn on the first landing, Cameron leapt down like an animal and slammed into him, pinning him to the wall. He let out a frightened shout and tried to struggle, but hitting at Cameron only hurt his hands.  
           “What’s the matter with you?” scolded the writer, who brought his hands up to cup Max’s jaw. He was too close, close enough for Max to feel the breath and heat of each word from his lips. “I only want to talk! I didn’t come all this way to hurt you, all right?” Getting closer by pressing their foreheads together, he stressed, “I’d _never_ hurt you.”  
           Max still had his mouth ajar somewhat, breathing hard. He’d exerted the last of his limited energy doing a full sprint. Even Cameron appeared a bit winded. As such, their hot breaths were mingling together in the space between them. For a long moment, neither of them said a word. The only sound that filled the stairwell was their panting. Max, though, was the first to close his mouth when he noticed the palpable sexual tension.  
            _Christ, how the hell could I be thinking about that at a time like this? He_ killed _Stacey! And regardless of whatever bullshit he says, he’s here to kill_ me _, too!_  
           “Come on,” instructed Cameron. “Let’s go back to your apartment, shall we?” He moved back, but took Max’s hand in his. He then started pulling the young man back to the apartment they’d run from. Max wanted to fight, but his body didn’t want to obey. He knew it’d be in vain, anyway; Cameron would only catch him again.  
           Soon enough, they were back in Max’s apartment. Cameron took off his jacket and held it.  
           “Where can I set this?”  
           “Um . . .” Max pointed at the couch, managing to speak in a tiny voice. “There.”  
           “Ah, so you _can_ talk,” Cameron quipped as he tossed his coat down beside Max’s. He sat down on the couch and sighed in comfort. After a moment, though, he noticed how Max loomed beside the door to the bedroom, tense and looking at the floor.  
           “What are you so afraid of?” he asked him.  
           “You killed Stacey,” Max stammered.  
           “Your point?”  
           The Aussie glared at his guest. “Let’s just say it’s not every day that I have a murderer in my living room.”  
           The writer raised his eyebrows. “Fair enough. But I told you why I did it. _And_ that I wouldn’t hurt you.”  
           “Why? Why any of this?”  
           Cameron extended his arms over the backing of the couch to lounge. “I guess I’ll be completely honest.”  
           “I’d _appreciate_ that.”  
           The rich man sniffed and rubbed his nose. “I kill for sport,” he confessed. It wasn’t the admission itself that surprised Max. Rather, it was the casual tone, as if Cameron was admitting to sucking his thumb or picking his nose. He continued, “So when I found you on Omegle, I thought, ‘Wow, what a loser. This guy’s easy pickings.’ But . . . something happened.”  
           Max narrowed his eyes as the man pointed at him.  
           “I got to know you—tried to read you like a case study. It’s been a long time since anyone’s intrigued me that much. All of a sudden, I realized that I didn’t want to kill you.” He shook his head. “No, Max, you’re one of a kind. Rather than kill you, part of me wanted instead to nurture you. We have so much in common, you and I. So much in common, but what differences we do have seem to complement each other. And when I first saw a picture of you, after looking you up online . . .” He let out a wolf whistle and smirked.  
           “So, what?” Max questioned with sarcasm, as he folded his arms over his chest. “You had a change of heart and decided to kill my ex-girlfriend instead?”  
           “Yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, I went to all the trouble of setting everything up, so I had to kill somebody. Figured it might as well be that bitch.”  
           “She wasn’t a bitch.”  
           “You were getting too close to her, anyway,” Cameron added in a dismissive tone. “She was luring you back into her trap, because god knows one man couldn’t be enough for her.”  
           Max bared his teeth. The longer Cameron spoke, the more agreeable the idea of stabbing him in the throat became.  
           Taking note of Max’s offense, Cameron pursed his lips and changed the subject. “You look tired. Get some rest.”  
           Max didn’t move, though he allowed his lips to fall back into a closed frown.  
           “I figure I’ll stay the night. Came a long way for this, after all. We’ll talk more once you’ve rested.”  
           Max stared, but so did Cameron. The introvert couldn’t help but think about cats: how they expressed dominance by staring until one looked away. Which of them was the dominant one? He could only assume it was Cameron.  
           “Well? Go on, then. Unless you’d like to talk some more now.”  
           Grudgingly, Max turned his back on Cameron and made his way into the bedroom. He closed the door behind himself and wished that it had a lock. As he stood with his back against it, he again began to panic.  
            _He’s going to wait until I’m asleep, then he’s going to come in here and kill me. I can’t let my guard down._  
           Max laid in bed for an hour, facing the wall and staring at the darkness in front of him. In his left hand he clutched the scissors. Despite his exhaustion, he knew sleep would be the death of him. So his eyes fought to stay open, but with each minute that passed, it became harder to reopen them after a blink.  
           The bedroom door moved with a soft creak. He froze. Nothing happened for what felt like an eternity, but then Cameron approached and stood beside the bed. Max prayed he wouldn’t notice that he was still awake and holding a weapon. A minute later and Cameron lifted the sheets, got into bed beside him. He could tell that he was staring at the back of his head. He held his scissors tighter.  
           He hadn’t heard anything before Cameron entered. Did that mean he was unarmed?  
            _No_ , Max realized, _only that he must’ve brought his own weapon._  
           Neither of them did anything for at least two minutes. Max no longer knew _what_ to do. He heard cloth moving—the sound of Cameron’s hand moving closer—and _didn’t know what to do_. He expected pain to follow, but instead, a palm rested itself upon his hip.  
           “Max,” the name was a quiet husk, a whisper past Cameron’s lips. Max’s heart raced as the man started to turn him over.  
           It was now or never.  
           Max whipped himself around, scissors raised. Before he could bring them down, though, Cameron clamped his hand around his wrist. Next thing he knew, their lips were pressed together. He was so stunned that he didn’t react all at once. His grip on the scissors loosened, but he still held them with a half-hearted effort. Cameron’s other hand found his cheek but soon moved, making its way past his neck to hold the back of his head. Then, he kissed Max deeper.  
           Though he wanted to fight, he was too tired. Besides, he realized, his body wanted this. Oh, _God_ , did it want this. So he relaxed a little bit, soon finding himself letting go of the scissors. They fell to the floor between the bed and the wall, but he didn’t care. He started to kiss Cameron back and allowed the man to pull their bodies closer together.  
           The writer’s tongue caressed the corners of Max’s mouth between kisses. It was wet and warm, yet enjoyable somehow. As he sucked on the Aussie’s lips, he offered the inside of his own. Kisses turned into nibbles. They couldn’t have been doing this for more than a minute, but Max could already feel more than his face flushing.  
            _No . . . Stop . . . I’m not into this. I can’t be! I-I’m straight!_  
           Despite his thoughts, when Cameron gave his lower lip a sensual, slow lick, his mouth flew open on its own. As their tongues wrestled, his hands wrapped around his toned torso, trying to pull him closer still.  
            _What am I doing? I can’t control myself . . . ! What’s he done to me?_  
           After nipping his lip, Cameron was suddenly on top, straddling him. He glided down Max’s face to the underside of his chin. There, he continued with firm, sucking kisses. He made love to the artist’s Adam’s apple with his mouth. Audible gasps escaped Max’s mouth despite how hard he tried to contain them. His fingers dug into the back of Cameron’s gray t-shirt, bunching it in his hands in ecstasy.  
           “Stop,” he hushed, but there was no force behind it. “Cameron, no . . . _Aah_.”  
           The writer moved back up, to Max’s ear now. He breathed his hot breath against the ridges of it, tantalizing and teasing with warmth. Chest to chest, he could feel his heartbeat, fast but steady. Max writhed under him, bending one of his knees. Cameron’s hand reached down upon feeling this and wrapped his hand around the joint. He pulled on it, forcing Max to lift his leg; their pelvises slid closer to each other. The sensation of that alone earned a small moan from Max.  
           “Say my name again,” whispered Cameron.  
            _Don’t do it. Don’t encourage him._  
           “Cameron,” Max exhaled, body disobeying mind.  
            _Shit, I can’t help it! Why is he so bloody irresistible to me?_  
           As if Max’s voice awoke some animalistic part of him, Cameron grew rougher. He released his leg and took hold of both of his wrists, moving them up. Once he had Max’s hands pinned together above his head, arms held raised, he resumed making out with him. The introvert arched his back off of the bed to press his chest closer to Cameron’s.  
           While the scene he found himself trapped in appalled most of him, he had to admit: part of him felt more alive than ever. There was something invigorating about being held down and assaulted this way. He wanted Cameron to go further. He wanted things to get rougher. He wanted more. In that moment, he was blind to the misdeeds that had brought him such fear only minutes ago.  
            _Oh, fuck it! This is happening now, whether I like it or not!_  
           Letting himself forget his inhibitions, he started matching the intensity of Cameron’s kisses. The writer must’ve noticed this, as he felt his lips curl into a smile. His hands ran down the undersides of Max’s clothed arms before floating to his chest. The Aussie wrapped his arms around him again, giving the hair at the back of his head a gentle tug.  
           Cameron took his time unzipping Max’s sweater. His firm hands caressed his chest through the light fabric of his baseball tee. In his head, Max wanted to kick himself for the erotic gasp he made when his fingers slid across one of his nipples. It earned a smirk from Cameron, whose hands slithered down and under the shirt. Up they went, the coldness of his fingertips causing Max to squirm. He pushed the shirt off of the artist, removing it and his hoodie at the same time before letting them drop to the floor. Then, stretching himself as he did, he removed his own t-shirt, revealing the hot build of his athletic chest. Max stared at it, taking in every crease and curve of it with hunger in his eyes.  
            _I want you. I want you. I want you._  
           The only light was coming from the kitchen, through the crack of the door that had almost drifted shut. With it, Max could barely make out Cameron undoing his belt. He glanced lower, below the buckle, finally noticing the ridge there. Staring at it in anticipation, he felt a shiver run down his spine.  
            _Don’t_ , he wanted to say. _I don’t want this._ But he already knew: _if I said that, I’d be lying._  
           When Cameron pulled out his erection, he allowed Max to gaze at it for a moment. The Aussie had never thought the sight of another man’s cock could so be damn arousing. Then again, his head was swimming with both exhaustion and ravenous lust. Likely a bad combination when trying to judge his sexuality, he reasoned.  
           “Like what you see?” joked the writer in a syrupy voice. All Max could do was stammer dumbly; this got him a low chuckle. “I’ll take that as a yes.”  
           As Cameron started to kiss him again, he could feel him undoing the button and zipper of his jeans. In what was almost a spasm, he dug his fingernails into his back and kissed eagerly at his clavicle. As if rewarding him for this, the writer rubbed him through his jeans. To Max’s surprise, he found it to be a much different sensation from when he touched himself. Much pleasanter, in comparison. Instead of the feeling bringing him shame, it brought him great enjoyment.  
           Before they knew it, both of them were completely naked, kicking their pants off of the bed and the covers with them.  
           “You’re a virgin, right?” Cameron asked him.  
           Max nodded, seeing no reason to lie. “Yeah,” he panted.  
           “I’ll be gentle to start, then.”  
           When Cameron started to stroke him, fingers firm around his arousal, Max lurched into him with a gasp. He was surprised by how sensitive he was; the smallest touch from Cameron sent waves of bliss rippling through his body.  
           “How’s that?”  
           Speaking no longer possible for him, Max only nodded, rubbing his chin against Cameron’s neck as he did. He found himself panting into the writer’s ear for no particular reason. When he felt Cameron’s throbbing hardness rubbing against his own, he let out a low moan.  
           “Loud, aren’t you?” Cameron managed to remark through a laugh. The artist snapped his mouth shut, but then the writer said, “No, do it. God, that’s so hot. I want to hear you scream.” He continued like this until Max’s quivering grew more intense, then he released him, replacing the sensation with another deep kiss.  
            _I feel like I’m going crazy . . . Why am I enjoying this so much? I shouldn’t! But, oh, God, it feels so good!_  
           When Cameron held something up, it took Max a few seconds to realize it was a wrapped condom. He wasn’t sure where it’d come from; had Cameron been holding it the whole time? There wasn’t much time for him to consider it, as the writer brought the serrated plastic to his mouth and tore it open with his sharp white teeth.  
            _Is this happening? Am I seeing this right?_  
           Max watched nervously as Cameron worked the condom onto his cock with steady hands. Soon, the writer was putting two of his fingers into Max’s again-open mouth. The introvert sucked on them like candy, slobbering all over them with his tongue. He was close to completion as it was, but he already knew Cameron had something more in mind. His worry was that he might not be able to last long enough to find out what. Using the newly-lubricated fingers, Cameron rubbed his gloved hard-on, but ended up adding his own saliva to the mix by spitting into his palm.  
           “What are you—?” Max choked, but couldn’t finish the question. Needless to say, it surprised him when Cameron grabbed and lifted his legs. He knew what was coming next, but wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Whatever tired delirium he was in passed all at once, though he knew he’d need it now more than ever. The term “French mistake” swung back and forth in his head like a pendulum. But there wasn’t any going back now.  
           Thanks to the saliva, Cameron’s entry wasn’t as painful as it should’ve been, but it still hurt like hell. He’d had no preparation for this; the feeling of fullness it brought was far too intense. At the same time, though, the sensation of Cameron inside him damn near sent him over the edge in an instant. He cried out in a mixture of pain and pleasure and threw his head back as he did. Even Cameron was quivering now; that was Max’s sign that they’d likely complete together. Something about that alone caused another surge of pleasure to wrack the Aussie’s body, even before the writer slid out and pounded back into him. He was getting louder now, each gasp a small cry instead. Though he wanted to bite his tongue, he couldn’t.  
           “Cam—eron—! _Ah_ , C-Came _ron_!”  
           “Max—” Cameron gagged the name in response. His next thrust was even harder, causing Max to shout.  
           “C-Cam—Camer—” Following another rough thrust, Max screamed as he came, all the muscles in his body seizing. His cry was fast stifled, though, when Cameron clamped his hand around his mouth. What little of the noise he’d heard seemed to be all he needed, as he proceeded to finish as well. He did so with only a small choke, in contrast to Max.  
           For a long moment, panting hard, they both stayed where they were. Max’s muscles twitched, still coping with the earth-shattering orgasm he’d experienced. Then, Cameron slid out and laid beside him. He wrapped his arm around the smaller man and pulled him closer. Max responded by draping an arm over his chest.  
           “That was amazing,” Cameron confided through a satisfied exhale.  
           After a quiet, agreeing hum, Max promptly drifted to sleep.

 


	9. Release

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 1 (January 14th, 2018): General touch-ups. Now Cameron is there for the second last scene.  
> Originally posted on April 30th, 2017.

When Max woke up, he found the previously kicked-off covers draped over him. He thought nothing of it at first. In fact, he continued to lie in bed for several minutes. It was only when he realized that he was alone in bed—and remembered that he shouldn’t be—that he jolted upright. Sitting up hurt him though, so he slunk back down under the covers. It didn’t help that the room was blinding; someone had pulled the curtains off of his windows.  
           He tried to recall what had happened the night prior. Most of it was a blur to him, since he’d been so worn out. It took him a couple of minutes to remember why he was naked. When he did, his face burned up from embarrassment.  
            _Jesus Christ, we had sex._  
           He rubbed his face with his hands. In retrospect, that was a horrible idea. After all, Cameron did admit that he killed for sport. He wasn’t exactly the best person to have given his virginity to. Never mind how sore he was now . . . Worse than that, Max’s conscience began to eat away at him.  
            _You dirty piece of trash_ , it berated. _How could you? That bastard stabbed your only friend to death and sent you pictures, so you let him_ fuck _you? Like some sort of_ slut _?_  
           He teethed on the nail of his right thumb. His left hand reached up to his hairline, mussing it up in his stress. He wanted to push it out of his mind and get back on track—to pick up the scissors and hunt Cameron down the same way he’d undoubtedly hunted Stacey. But he couldn’t. Every time he tried to forget what he’d recalled of his experience with Cameron, he recalled a little more.  
           It had felt so good. So . . . _right_. What terrified Max more than anything was the realization that he didn’t feel mere infatuation for Cameron anymore. No, what he felt was stronger than that now. As much as he wanted to deny it, there was a part of him in the back of his head that wanted— _needed_ —more.  
           He didn’t like it. He hated that part of himself. “Stop it,” he snarled at it as he tugged at his hair. “Stop it!”  
            _I’m not even gay! There’s no way I could have feelings for Cameron. It was only a fluke—something that happened in the heat of the moment—a_ French mistake _! I don’t want more; I don’t_ like _Cameron. I_ detest _him!_  
           Frustrated, he ignored his pain and sat up again. He wanted to punch Cameron in the face. So, he visualized it.  
           “Cameron!” he saw himself shout as he marched toward the man.  
           “Yes?” inquired the handsome man, as though he was innocent.  
           Without answering, Max raised his fist to hit him, but he caught it. Then, they were making out again.  
            _Damn it!_  
           Max shook his head free of the vision and stood up. The room chilled his naked body to the bone, so he was quick in scanning it. The curtains from the window were lain over the back of his chair. On the seat, folded neatly, were his clothes. Cameron’s were gone, but then again, so was the man himself.  
           Sure enough, it hurt to walk, but Max did his best to push it to the back of his head. He picked up his clothing piece by piece and redressed. Then he tried to find his scissors. To his surprise, they weren’t there. He got onto the bed and dug further down. Still nothing. Max realized what had happened and cringed.  
            _He took the damned scissors. Son of a bitch._  
           He got up and opened the bedroom door. As he did, he noticed the piece of paper taped to it. With a scowl, he looked closer.  
           “Gone to the store,” it read, with a smiley face.  
            _Even his handwriting is gorgeous_ , Max thought. Then he slammed his forehead into the door with a frustrated groan. The polarity of his thoughts and the argument he was losing against himself were torture.  
           He figured that Cameron meant for him to follow, so he slipped his shoes on. He took his coat, then left his apartment. With hatred in every step, he marched to the convenience store. He didn’t talk to or even look at anybody as he walked, though he kept his head held high. People on the street made an active effort to sidle away from him when he approached. For the first time, he felt confident. All it took was seething rage and passionate frustration brought on by sexual confusion.  
           When he arrived at the convenience store, Mr. Diefenbach smiled and greeted him as normal. He didn’t respond to it this time, though: he felt too unstable for social niceties. With a poker face, he approached the counter.  
           “Is everything all right?” asked Mr. Diefenbach.  
           “Listen,” Max spoke, “is there a guy here? Muscular guy, about this tall?”  
           Mr. Diefenbach moaned in thought. Ultimately, he didn’t seem to understand the question, as he changed the subject. “I heard last night, noises from you, above me.”  
           “What?” snapped Max. He admitted to himself that he came across as a bit too curt, but didn’t care at the moment.  
           “Screams,” confessed the old man in a worrying tone. “Sounded like pain. Creaking and crying too. Are you okay?”  
           Max felt his face go beet red in an instant. His throat dried. He hadn’t even bothered to think about his neighbors while screaming last night. Because of that, Mr. Diefenbach had heard the entire thing. He stammered, too stunned to articulate a proper sentence in his defense.  
           “Want anything, Max?”  
           Max turned his head as Cameron approached the counter, holding some groceries. He looked back at Mr. Diefenbach, who was still waiting for an answer, then back at Cameron.  
           “What were they?” he asked the handsome man in an anxious breath.  
           “What were what?” Cameron inquired as he picked up and bit into an apple. He looked at Mr. Diefenbach and held it up. “Don’t worry, I’ll pay for this.”  
           “The screams. Last night.”  
           “Oh!” With confidence, as he placed everything down on the counter, Cameron answered, “You know what? Those were from the tenants of 407. I thought they’d never shut up.”  
           “Ah . . .” It was a piss-poor excuse, but one that Mr. Diefenbach decided to accept. But then, he asked, “How do you two know each other?”  
           Before Max could panic, Cameron beamed and reached for a handshake, which the old man gave him. “We spoke a few days ago, remember? Name’s Cameron. I’m a friend of Max’s. Needed a place to crash for a while, and he was nice enough to let me stay with him.”  
            _For a man who doesn’t seem to like liars_ , Max thought, _Cameron sure is excellent at being one. His white lie sounds so smooth, it could almost be the truth._  
           “Oh, nice to meet you,” Mr. Diefenbach responded, completely fooled.  
           Max remained silent for the duration of Cameron paying Mr. Diefenbach. The writer gave the old man a fifty dollar bill, despite his total coming to less than twenty, then told him, “Keep the change.” Max felt like he’d be sick.  
           Afterward, they returned to Max’s apartment. Neither of them said a word until Max closed the door behind them and locked it.  
           “So,” Cameron started as he placed his bag down on the kitchen island like he lived there. “Seems he heard everything.”  
           “Don’t sound so goddamned cheeky about it,” Max spat.  
           “Someone’s grumpy. Wasn’t last night good for you?”  
           “No,” Max lied in a biting tone, “it _wasn’t_.” When Cameron gave him a sarcastic, knowing look, he argued, “I was too tired to know what was going on. I might’ve enjoyed it then, but I’m awake now and I regret it.”  
           “You don’t think you’d enjoy it if we did it again right now?” the writer challenged on a low hum. The suggestive nature of his tone and the ensuing eye contact sent a warm chill down Max’s backbone.  
           “O-of course I wouldn’t. I’m not gay, Cameron.”  
           Cameron was still for a moment, but then he smirked. He turned and started to approach Max, who took a step back.  
           “No,” warned the artist, “you stay back. Stay away. Don’t touch me.”  
           Cameron ignored him and lunged forward. With his hands pressed against the wall on either side of Max, he leaned closer until their faces were only inches apart. All of this occurring in the course of no more than two seconds, the Aussie’s breath hitched. Then, all was silent. The two of them stood where they were, Max trembling, breathing each other’s breath.  
           “Don’t”—Max began to speak, but it was as if Cameron could sense it. He cut him off by smashing their lips together once more. The sensation sparked something in the artist’s chest, causing his rage to flush from his system. He wasn’t even sure _why_ he’d been angry. All that mattered was this. So he wrapped his arms around Cameron, whose hands were on his waist. They started to kiss each other harder—deeper.  
           It wasn’t until the taller man’s hot tongue was again wrestling his own that Max remembered his inner turmoil. Flashes of the pictures Cameron had sent him of Stacey’s lifeless body flashed before his eyes.  
            _No . . . No, this is wrong. This is sick! What would Stacey think?_  
           He moved his hands to Cameron’s chest and started trying to shove him away, but the muscular man wouldn’t budge. His left hand moved up from Max’s waist to the back of his head, holding him firmer. His tonguing started to get more aggressive, until he was practically fucking Max’s mouth. It was becoming harder and harder for the Aussie to resist.  
            _One more time won’t hurt . . .  
           No, goddamn it, stop it! Snap out of it! Push him away!_  
           The artist grabbed at the writer’s sleeves and tried to do what his mind ordered. When that didn’t work, he tried pushing his face away by the jaw. In response, Cameron used his hands to grab both of his wrists and pin them to the wall near his head.  
           Max started to squirm in discomfort. Cameron was getting rougher. Yet, while part of him was afraid, the rest of him was even more aroused than before. He wanted it rough. That frightened him terribly. He didn’t _want_ to want this. So he struggled some more. Finally, Cameron stopped kissing his mouth long enough for him to speak.  
           “Stop,” he panted. “Stop it. I don’t want it.”  
           Cameron only responded by grinding up against him and nibbling the underside of his chin. Max shivered and trembled. It felt so good.  
            _I want it to stop feeling so good . . . !_  
           “I said _stop._ I don’t—want this.” He started to scream: “Don’t! Let go of me, Cameron!” But that didn’t help either. “You’re _hurting_ me!”  
           With those words, Cameron finally pulled back. His grip on Max’s wrists loosened. He looked at his face with a sobering concern. “What’s wrong? Am I being too rough?”  
           Max took his chance to shove Cameron away. It worked, causing the man took a step back. He seemed both worried and confused. The introvert bolted over to the couch and stood in front of it, ready to run again.  
           “I told you to stop!”  
           “Sorry,” Cameron admitted, somewhat defensive, “I didn’t think you were being serious!”  
           “No means _no_ , asshole! I told you, I’m not gay!”  
           The writer scoffed. Amused, he looked down at the bulge that had formed in Max’s pants and remarked, “That’s not what your cock says.”  
           Max pointed at the door. “Get out.”  
           “Oh, come on, Max.”  
           “Get _out_!”  
           Slowly, Cameron’s expression shifted. He frowned, something Max had yet to see him do. The disapproval on his face was obvious. With only a disappointed sigh, he turned and left the apartment.  
            _No, wait. Don’t leave me alone!_ Max wanted to call out these words after him, but made himself bite his tongue.  
           The door hung open behind him as he disappeared into the hallway. There were no footsteps, though, to indicate that he’d left. He’d got out, but seemed to be standing just out of sight. This both relieved and enraged Max, though he did nothing but ignore it.  
            _Stace . . ._  
           Max finally sat down. Before he knew what he was doing, he was crying. The tears came late, but when they did, they were plentiful. Everything that had happened in the past five days had culminated into one huge sobbing fest. He couldn’t take it anymore, but crying wasn’t helping. With shaky hands, he tugged his hair over his leaking eyes and cried harder.  
           “Oh, God, Stacey . . . Stace . . . ! I’m so sorry. This is all my fault . . . Sta _cey_ . . . !”  
           He didn’t care who heard . . . but it didn’t help either. He needed release. His eyes shot to the open door out of the apartment. All Cameron could give him was a way to pretend it’d never happened, but he’d always be a reminder of it, wouldn’t he? After all, he _was_ Stacey’s murderer. Why did she have to tell him to go on Omegle? Why on that night? Why had she been punished for _his_ mistakes?  
            _Because it’s more tragic that way. Cameron’s a writer; he wants to tell a story._  
           What, then, did he want as an ending? If Max had to guess, he seemed to be aiming for a happy ending; one where they wound up together. One where he’d leave Boston with him and go wherever he did, forever.  
            _Oh, I’ll give him a bloody ending, all right. Not the ending_ he _wants, but the ending his pathetic protagonist writes_ for _him!_  
           After a few beats, he leapt to his feet and rushed into his bedroom. He slammed the door shut and picked up his office chair to block it. It didn’t work, though; the wheels kept causing it to slip. Frustrated, he let out a cry as he picked it up and hurled it against the wall. Then he jumped up onto his bed. With a pull of the latch, his window pushed open outward. He stared through it, but didn’t dare look down.  
            _I want release? Well,_ this _is my release . . ._  
           He remembered how, only a few days ago, he’d considered the odds of his death falling from this window. He hadn’t considered his chances very high. Looking out through it now, though, he recalled how the ground below was solid concrete. There was a parking lot back there, but no one ever used it. After a few seconds, it dawned on him: what he was about to do.  
            _This is insane. I’m not suicidal. I’ll die if I do this. I don’t want to die! I only want release . . . !_  
           Release from this living hell his life had turned into. It was either this or submitting to Cameron, because he doubted the man would ever let him go. This was his only chance to escape. He knew it was irrational and crazy, but to him, it was better than being in love with a serial killer.  
           “Max?” When the bedroom door opened, the Aussie whipped around. He sat down on the ledge, ready to push himself back at any moment. Upon entering, Cameron saw this and froze. For a beat, their eyes locked in silence. There looked to be genuine fear in the writer’s dark caramel eyes, but who knew whether it was fake? When he twitched, preparing to step forward, Max shot his arm out toward him as a warning.  
           “No! Stay right there. Don’t move a fucking _muscle_ , or I’ll jump; I swear I will, so help me God! You _know_ I will!”  
           Cameron held his hands up in surrender. “Okay,” he gasped. “Okay, I get it. I won’t move. Don’t do this, Max. Think about this.”  
           “Oh, I have, Cameron. I _have_ thought about this.”  
           “You don’t want to do this. This is crazy.”  
           “Not as crazy as you!”  
           Cameron’s brows furrowed. “Listen. I can help you. It doesn’t have to end here.”  
           “Help me?” Max laughed, though it sounded more like a sob. “How? By killing someone else? My parents, perhaps? You’re a monster, Cameron!”  
           “Then call the cops!” insisted the writer as he offered his hands, wrists together to pantomime handcuffs. “Get me arrested! Show them the pictures I sent you, show them the texts! Anything but _this_!”  
           Max, a wry smirk on his face contorted by emotional pain, shook his head. “No. You’d only get out. You’d frame me.”  
           Cameron lowered his hands. There was a look of sadness painted onto his handsome face. “Max . . .” He tittered. “Come on, mate. I was kidding!”  
           “Sometimes you have to let the characters write the story, Cameron. You have to let the characters decide where the story ends.”  
           The writer shook his head, slow then fast. “No,” he said. “No, no, no. Don’t do this to me, Max. Please don’t do this.”  
           It was raining outside. The weather had been confusing as of late: some days it was snowing, others it was pouring. Whatever the case, Maxime Aleshire hadn’t seen the sun for several days . . .  
           He closed his eyes tight and pushed himself backwards.  
           “ _Max_!”

 

           

           When he landed, he landed hard. What confused him amidst the jolt of fright, though, was that he was still conscious. Only to the point where, if there _was_ any pain, he couldn’t feel it, but he was _still conscious_. Whatever he’d landed on felt padded, but was metal underneath. It’d creaked and crumpled to break his fall; he’d heard what sounded like two or three windows shattering.  
           He opened his eyes as wide as he could, which was only a sliver. Everything was cloudy and spinning. He was hurt badly, but not dead.  
            _Just my luck._  
           All he could feel was the coldness of the raindrops that landed on his face. He struggled to turn his head—to get up and see what he’d landed on—but it was no use. The most he managed was getting his head to fall to the side.  
           He realized two things once he was able to look to his right. First, he hadn’t landed on the ground. No, he’d landed on something else.  
            _A car_ , he determined. _Of_ course _I landed on a car._  
           He felt around with a weak hand, pressing down. It felt like a mattress of some sort.  
            _Who puts a mattress on the roof of their car and leaves it?_  
           Third, he discovered he wasn’t alone in the parking lot. He struggled to focus his eyes so he could see the person leaning against the wall of the building, but he couldn’t. Thankfully they approached . . . but that didn’t make Max any happier.  
           It was Cameron, of course. He was spinning something—car keys, Max decided—around his right index finger. Above the ringing in his ears, Max heard him whistle.  
           “You know, you’re right,” he said. “Sometimes you do have to sit back and let the characters guide the story. But what you forgot, Max, is that every good story needs a little bit of Murphy’s Law.”  
           Max tried to argue, but he was only able to groan in pain. He didn’t even bother to wonder why Cameron had planned ahead in the event of this. It was almost as if he’d unwittingly played right into his insane plot.  
           Cameron leaned close to the Aussie’s face and smirked. “So,” he asked, voice playful, “what do you think of my car?”  
           Max felt his lips curl into a smile against his will. He lifted his head, a struggle in and of itself, before forcing himself to speak. Meeting Cameron’s eyes, he spat, “Fuck you.”  
           The writer grinned out of a sick sense of pride. Then, Max felt his eyes rolling back. His neck could no longer support the weight of his head. A few seconds later, he fell unconscious.  
           Cameron stood up straight and exhaled. His car wasn’t too dented—the light mattress he’d strapped to the roof had absorbed most of the impact. It helped that Max wasn’t very heavy. Still, he knew he’d be better off buying a new vehicle altogether.  
           He carefully scooped the artist up into his arms. By his estimate, he’d likely taken a significant blow to the back more than anything else. It wouldn’t surprise him to find that one or more of his vertebrae shattered on impact. He only hoped that his spinal cord wasn’t injured to the point of no return.  
           The suicide attempt had, of course, been something he’d considered as a possible out for Max. After losing a previous “case study” the same way, seeing how similar they looked, he’d decided to be cautious. It seemed they _acted_ similar, too. At least he’d planned ahead.  
           Though, to be honest, he hadn’t expected this outcome. Not that he’d expected the introvert to come with him on his own. He knew that wasn’t in the cards, but he still hadn’t expected Max to make an attempt on his own life, at least not like this. It seemed out of character. Why hadn’t he been able to talk him down?  
           His plan had been more along the lines of Max _faking_ his own suicide to run away with him. Of course, though, things couldn’t _always_ go to plan. This alternative worked, anyway.  
           With a weary sigh, he opened the side door of the car and laid Max down along the backseat. Then he closed the door. The mattress was left on the roof of the car to hide the dents. He walked around and stepped into the driver’s seat. The car still started, which was a relief to him. He glanced up at Max’s unconscious form in the rearview mirror and beamed at it.  
           “Happy Doomsday, Max.”


	10. Doomsday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 1 (January 14th, 2018): General touch-ups. Removed a complication on Cameron's end that was never really built upon.  
> Originally posted on May 1st, 2017.

Cameron took the candles in his palm and stuck them into the spongey cake on the counter. It was October 10th. According to John Conway’s Doomsday algorithm, it was a doomsday. This also meant that it was Tuesday, since it was 2017. Cameron always enjoyed celebrating doomsdays. This year, Tuesday was his favorite day of the week. Next year, it would be Wednesday.  
           He wasn’t sure what he got out of celebrating every doomsday. A satisfaction with life? A sense of fulfillment? Either way, he felt that every doomsday was special. October 10th was, like many others, a day that always fell on doomsday. October 10th of 2018 was guaranteed to be a Wednesday. The 31st—Halloween—was also a doomsday, as were the 3rd, 17th, and 24th. Cameron had been born on June 13th: doomsday.  
           If someone were to ask him _why_ he took such an interest the algorithm, he knew he wouldn’t have a real answer. There was just something about the term “doomsday” that piqued his interest and made him think it was awesome.  
           April 4 th, the day of Max’s suicide attempt, had also been a doomsday. In retrospect, he sort of wished he had waited to kill Stacey Eichel. He’d always enjoyed killing on doomsdays more than others. Even better, though, were birthday kills. Finding people whose birthdates landed on doomsday was always fun. He’d wait until the day arrived and kill them then. Reminded by the thought of birthdays, Cameron stopped daydreaming and returned to the cake.  
           All doomsdays were special, but _this_ doomsday was more so than the rest. Someone he knew was celebrating their birthday today. He took his time, lighting all the candles one by one. Once each of them had a glowing flame on its wick, he turned to the drawer and pulled it open. From it he pulled out a large knife, tested its edge. It was sharp, as he preferred. This knife would do the trick. Holding it, he took the cake in both hands and headed upstairs.  
           He was in his own house. It was large and spacious; quite the opposite of what he considered modest. He could almost call it a mansion. Up until six months ago, it had been his and his alone. Not that he minded sharing it now. As he’d said to Max about his money, he felt there was no point having such a lavish home all to himself. Sharing was caring, after all.  
           Upon reaching the second floor, he turned to his right. In front of him was the doorway to the outside balcony. Both doors were open and there, standing near the railing and staring into the distance, stood the birthday boy. In his right hand, he held a lit cigarette. Smoking was a bad habit of Cameron’s that clashed with his otherwise-healthy lifestyle. He usually didn’t smoke unless stress got the better of him, which was rare. He’d somehow managed to get his new, permanent housemate hooked, though. It was part of his plan to deal with that soon, but he knew he might never get around to it. For a moment, the writer only stood by the stairs, holding the cake and gazing at the birthday boy.  
           The brisk October winds were blowing the cigarette smoke into his face, but he didn’t seem to mind. His clean, fluffy brown hair was being thrown about wildly, but the more of a mess it became, the more attractive it was. Messy hair suited him. He was scrawny as he always would be, still so much shorter than Cameron. Despite a spinal injury six months prior, he’d coped well, though he sometimes preferred to rely on a cane. Dressed in a crisp black suit, something about the glow of the setting sun in the horizon made him look stunning.  
           Cameron figured he’d stalled long enough. There was a small, round table a few feet away, between him and the doors to the balcony. The only thing on it was an ashtray. He cleared his throat and the birthday boy turned to face him. Then, he approached the table.  
           “Happy birthday to you,” he sung. “Happy _birth_ day to you.”  
           The young man on the balcony took a few steps closer as Cameron set down the cake.  
           “Happy _birthday_ , dear Maxime . . .”  
           Max met Cameron’s gaze. There was a hint of a smile on his lips.  
           “Happy birthday to you.” Cameron leaned forward and kissed his cheek, then his lips. After pulling away, he cupped his head in his hands and crooned, “Your birthday is my favorite doomsday.”  
           The Aussie said nothing. He lowered his cigarette to the table and ground it out in the ashtray. His cold disposition remained intact until he straightened himself and looked down at the cake. Without resistance, he allowed himself to smirk. Then, in one smooth, continuous breath, he blew out all twenty candles.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please leave a Kudo, and be sure the check out the sequel, _[Ignore the Camera](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9520076)_!

**Works inspired by this one:**

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